Oral Answers to Questions

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Ethiopia

Doug Naysmith: What measures the Government are taking to help the people of Ethiopia to overcome famine and other development problems.

Gareth Thomas: The UK is committed to supporting Ethiopia's efforts to reduce poverty and address its continuing problems of food insecurity. Our programme is set to expand significantly in the next few years, rising from some £44 million in the last financial year to some £85 million in 2005–06.

Doug Naysmith: I thank my hon. Friend for that interesting and informative reply. It is clear that the Department for International Development is making a significant contribution in that regard. He mentioned land security, or the perception of land security. That is a matter that arises in other African countries too. Are there any lessons of wider significance to be learned from what is happening in Ethiopia?

Gareth Thomas: As my hon. Friend suggests, there have been problems in Ethiopia, not least because of people's perception and memory of previous efforts to redistribute land in that area. Research that we commissioned with the Ethiopian Economic Association has helped to change the attitude of the Government of Ethiopia, who are now supporting a comprehensive system of land certification, which will enable farmers to develop their land, to rent it out, to pass it on to their children and, as a result, to invest in the soil and hence increase the agricultural productivity of the country.

Laurence Robertson: The Minister will be aware that in Ethiopia the problem of poverty is far more acute where families are headed by women than where families are headed by men, bad though it is in that case. The situation is worsened by the fact that young girls have to spend almost all their time travelling to villages many miles away simply to bring back water. Does the Minister agree, therefore, that education, particularly of young girls, is of paramount importance in Ethiopia?

Gareth Thomas: The hon. Gentleman is right to allude not only to the particular difficulties that women face in Ethiopia, but to the challenges of making water more available to more of the people there. He will be pleased to know that the Government of Ethiopia have started to prioritise small-scale irrigation projects in areas that are most vulnerable to drought. The £30 million worth of budget support that we are putting in to help the Government of Ethiopia should, we hope, help the Government of Ethiopia to increase their capacity to roll out such investment.

Middle East

Richard Burden: What progress he is making with the country assistance plan for Palestine.

Hilary Benn: Following extensive consultations with a wide range of partners in the UK, Palestine and Israel, I have now approved the final version of the plan. It will be formally published in early June, and I will make a copy available in the Library as soon as it is printed. A copy will also be available on our website.

Richard Burden: The draft country assistance plan rightly placed a great deal of emphasis on promoting the peace process in order to achieve development assistance effectively. I welcome the assistance given by the Department and by the international community to the support unit of the Palestinian Negotiation Affairs Department, which plays a vital role in assisting the Palestinians to develop and present their case and to develop a generation of leaders committed to peace. Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that there appears to be a fairly concerted lobbying effort by those close to the Israeli embassy—we may even see it today—to get that funding cut, presumably to deny to the stateless Palestinians the capacity to make the kind of articulate and moderate presentation of their case that a powerful state like Israel can fund for itself?

Hilary Benn: The decision that we took, together with four other donors, to fund the negotiation support unit was taken precisely because it is right and proper that the Palestinian Authority should have access to good advice. It was always explicit in the establishment of the unit that that role would include communicating to the wider world the views of the Palestinian Authority. I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the work of the negotiation support unit, because it has received praise from many quarters, including from the Governments of Israel and of the United States. I agree with my hon. Friend, however, about the importance of moderation in presentation because it is right and proper that that work should be done in the spirit in which the negotiation support unit was established, but it is undoubtedly playing a valuable role in trying to help create the conditions in which the peace process can develop.

Alex Salmond: Does the Minister detect that the refusal of the United Kingdom to condemn in the United Nations the ex-judicial assassination of Palestinian leaders and the Prime Minister's support for the Bush-Sharon initiative has interfered with this country's reputation as an honest broker that can help the Palestinian people? Does the Minister think that the continuation of that approach to the middle east problem and the departure from the traditional attitude will interfere with the country assistance plan and other initiatives?

Hilary Benn: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's characterisation of the Government's position on the two issues that he has outlined. We have always made it clear, and we continue to make it clear, that all those issues must form part of the final status negotiations between the Palestinians and the Government of Israel. From my position of responsibility, I do not detect that anything has got in the way of the appreciation for UK support by the Palestinian Authority and others in the occupied territories—on the contrary, the UK help is much appreciated. The practical assistance that we are providing is set out in the country assistance plan, copies of which will be available shortly.

Louise Ellman: How can my right hon. Friend ensure that funds intended for the development of Palestinian society are not used to support terror, the use of which is intended to stop peace ever being achieved? Does the film, "The Farewell Letter", which is shown repeatedly on Palestinian television, concern him? It extols the virtues of suicide bombing, and ends with a young boy, who, having successfully completed a suicide-bombing mission, falls on the ground and says, "Martyrdom is sweet."

Hilary Benn: I have not seen that particular film, but suicide bombing has nothing to offer the peace process, and all hon. Members on both sides of the House utterly condemn it. On the first part of my hon. Friend's question, a reform process is occurring within the Palestinian Authority. Indeed—this relates to the previous question—the support that the UK gives is partly directed at that reform process. Real strides have been made, which is why praise has been universal for the efforts of Salam Fayyad, the Minister of Finance in the Palestinian Authority, who has made great strides in bringing order, openness, scrutiny and accountability to the Palestinian Authority's expenditure. We strongly support the continuation of that process, which helps to deal with my hon. Friend's concerns. Every accusation that money has been directed towards terrorism has been investigated, but none of them has been proven.

Sudan

Rob Marris: What contribution his Department is making to achieving peace and resolving the humanitarian crisis in Sudan.

Hilary Benn: The peace talks in Naivasha seem to be reaching their final stages and I hope that the parties will reach a framework agreement soon. I am gravely concerned about the situation in Darfur, western Sudan, where there have been killings, rape and the destruction of villages. More than 1 million people have been displaced, and 130,000 people have fled to Chad to escape the fighting. We must act now to avert a humanitarian catastrophe. The UK has committed more than £16.5 million to humanitarian agencies and is the second largest donor to Darfur, after the United States of America. Yesterday, I met the Sudanese Foreign Minister and impressed on him the urgent need to ensure security for the population and humanitarian access.

Rob Marris: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. The UK Government have made sterling efforts in Sudan, and particularly in Darfur. At the end of this month, the seasonal rains will come to Darfur, which is an area in the west of Sudan that is a similar size to Britain. Can my right hon. Friend hold out any hope of increased aid, because those seasonal rains will create delivery difficulties?

Hilary Benn: My hon. Friend is right that the situation is urgent because of the imminent onset of the rains. Last week, I announced an additional £10 million for humanitarian aid, and I pay tribute to my officials, who have been working extremely hard over the past 24 hours to agree further funding. We are providing extra funding to the World Food Programme for emergency food assistance and logistical support. In addition, £1.5 million is going to the World Health Organisation for emergency primary health care and for measles vaccination, and £1.5 million is going to UNICEF for feeding, health care and child protection, particularly for those children who are displaced. It is vital that that assistance gets in, and that non-governmental organisations and other UN agencies access the area to make sure that the aid—the UK contribution is important—gets to the people who need it.

John Bercow: What undertakings on the maintenance of the ceasefire, respect for human rights and access for humanitarian aid were sought and received from the Government of Sudan before the British Government accepted the re-election of Sudan as a member of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights?

Hilary Benn: I raised the points that the hon. Gentleman mentions in my meeting yesterday with Foreign Minister Ismail. It appears that the ceasefire is holding in part, but not completely. For the Government of Sudan, the first priority is to ensure that they rein in the Janjaweed, who have caused a lot of the suffering that has been taking place. Secondly, they should ensure that African Union monitors are able to get into the area to ensure that the ceasefire is maintained. A reconnaissance team from the African Union is in Darfur as we speak. Thirdly—I raised this point specifically with the Foreign Minister—they should significantly speed up the time that it takes to issue travel visas and travel permits to enable the humanitarian agencies to gain access to Darfur so that they can do their job.

John Bercow: I am extremely grateful to the Secretary of State for that comprehensive and helpful reply. Given that mass murder, rape, pillage and the destruction of crops have already taken place in Darfur; that food, water, medicine and shelter are desperately needed there; and that the UN co-ordinator on humanitarian affairs for Sudan has described the situation as the worst humanitarian and human rights catastrophe in the world, when does the right hon. Gentleman expect to see in place the international monitoring of the ceasefire that is an indispensable prerequisite of the effective distribution of humanitarian aid?

Hilary Benn: The answer to the last part of the hon. Gentleman's question is: as quickly as possible. The day before yesterday, I spoke to Said Djinnit, the peace and security commissioner of the African Union, who is very exercised about the current situation. It was he who told me that the team is already in place. As soon as they can get the support and logistical arrangements that they need, the African Union is ready to deploy the monitors who, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, are needed in order to satisfy the African Union and the international community, including Members of this House, that the ceasefire is being upheld. That is the essential first step towards securing access to all areas of Darfur so that humanitarian aid can get in.

Tom Clarke: I thank my right hon. Friend for his immense involvement in a very difficult problem. Does he agree that one of the difficulties in respect of Rwanda more than a decade ago was that the necessary amount of intelligence was unavailable to the international community? In the context of what the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) rightly said about the necessity of international involvement and scrutiny, is my right hon. Friend satisfied that we have enough intelligence about what is going on, and will he continue to influence the United Nations and its agencies to make their contribution?

Hilary Benn: In direct answer to my right hon. Friend, no, I am not satisfied that we know the full picture. That is partly because not all parts of Darfur are accessible, hence the importance of the ceasefire being maintained, the monitors getting in, humanitarian aid arriving, and NGOs and other UN bodies being able to access all areas. As we await the report from the UN human rights team that is investigating the situation, we fear that it may be even worse than current indications suggest. That is why not a moment can be lost in ensuring that the world community responds by giving the practical assistance that is required to ensure that these people, who have already suffered a great deal, do not suffer any more.

Tom Brake: The Secretary of State will be aware that at the end of April a UN team was nearly blocked from going to Darfur; that the Sudanese Government contrived to ensure that a discussion about their human rights abuses did not take place at the UN Human Rights Committee; and that the ceasefire ends in 13 days. Given that the UK Government have decided that a resolution under chapter VII of the United Nations charter, which could ultimately lead to military action, is inappropriate does the Secretary of State agree with the idea proposed by the UN that a UN human rights commission should go to Sudan to investigate whether human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed? If so, what does he think the UK Government can do to assist that process and to ensure that that commission gains access to Darfur? [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Before the Secretary of State answers, I emphasise that those on the Front Bench have a privilege that they should not abuse. I have the right not to call Front-Bench Members; calling them is a favour that I do them.

Hilary Benn: In the spirit of your strictures, Mr. Speaker, I refer the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) to my earlier answer about the human rights team from the United Nations that is currently investigating. We look forward to its report, which will help to answer his question. The most important contribution that can be made is maintaining the ceasefire. At least there is a ceasefire agreement; we now need to ensure that it is enforced. The greatest contribution to that is getting the monitors in, because the world can then be told whether it is holding.

Commission for Africa

Huw Edwards: When he next plans to meet Sir Bob Geldof to discuss poverty relief in Africa.

Hilary Benn: The next scheduled meeting I have with Sir Bob Geldof will be the second meeting of the Commission for Africa planned for the autumn this year.
	I would like to express my thanks to Sir Bob Geldof for his tireless dedication to Africa over the past 20 years, and for his persistence in focusing our attention on Africa.

Huw Edwards: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will join me in acknowledging the dogged determination that Sir Bob Geldof has shown and his impatience with the world's rich countries. While he cites the figures of 6,000 people a day dying of AIDS in Africa and only one in 400 having access to anti-retroviral drugs, what assurance can my right hon. Friend give that, when the G8 countries meet next year, the needs of Africa will be at the centre of the discussions?

Hilary Benn: The G8 countries will have the report of the Commission for Africa before them when they meet next year. It is partly intended to ensure that the world continues to pay attention to the condition of that continent. If we, as a world community, do not tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which affects sub-Saharan Africa more than anywhere else, the prospects for development are bleak. Last year, just under 2.5 million Africans died of AIDS. Increased resources and the falling price of anti-retrovirals mean that we have the opportunity to do more to treat people in Africa. As well as providing the resources, the international community must ensure that our money, effort and enthusiasm are deployed to support the developing country Governments rather than add to their burdens. The more we can pool our money, the greater effect it can have.

Robert Key: In seeking to relieve debt in Africa, especially in communities where there is an interface between Islam and Christianity, is there any evidence to show that the damaged reputation of the United States of America and the United Kingdom in Iraq is making it harder to act to relieve debt?

Hilary Benn: No, there is no such evidence because the obstacle to further relief of debt in Africa for those countries that have not yet been able to access the heavily indebted poor countries scheme is the fact that they have been emerging from conflict or that they do not qualify for the debt relief programme. So far, 23 countries have reached decision point. I am anxious that the other countries should be able to access the scheme. When they have done that, the second task is to ensure that they leave the scheme with a sustainable amount of debt. In that respect, I am sure that the recent decision to award topping up to Niger and Ethiopia will be widely welcomed.

HIV/AIDS

Christine Russell: What recent representations he has received on the need to tackle HIV/AIDS globally.

Gareth Thomas: Following the Government's call for action on HIV/AIDS, we are developing a new UK strategy for our response to help tackle the epidemic. We are conducting a wide-ranging consultation with stakeholders, including civil society, the private sector and developing country Governments. We aim to publish the strategy later this year.

Christine Russell: I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware of a recent World Health Organisation report that calls on the rich nations of the world to do more to help the poorer countries, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, where AIDS is such a problem. Does he share my anxiety that, if we do not do more, we will find it difficult to reach the millennium goals for the reduction of maternal and infant mortality? I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for his commitment to put AIDS high on the agenda when Britain takes over the presidency of the European Union and the G8 next year.

Gareth Thomas: My hon. Friend is right to say that HIV/AIDS is reversing many of the development gains of the past 20 years. It will continue to hamper progress towards those millennium development goals. She is right to say that we in the UK and the international community have to do much more to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic, not least because I believe that the worst is yet to come. Estimates suggest that there will be some 25 million orphans and vulnerable children in Africa alone by 2010. That is one reason for prioritising HIV/AIDS for the extra £320 million that we are committing to Africa by the end of 2005–06.

Julian Brazier: The Minister's answer is welcome, but, as always, it focuses heavily on money. The Government would do well to look at the example of Uganda, which has achieved a truly terrific reduction in the incidence of HIV, saving tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives. Its ABC programme involves abstinence, being faithful to one's partner, and the use of condoms. May I urge the Minister to look at best practice as the best way of saving lives?

Gareth Thomas: As I said a moment ago, we are consulting a whole range of organisations about the best practice that we should deploy as a response to HIV/AIDS. He is absolutely right to say that Uganda has set a great example. The single most important factor in tackling the epidemic in-country is to have strong political leadership on the issue, and President Museveni has set a great example to other countries in Africa in that regard. The example of stronger, more high profile political leadership is the key requirement if we are to tackle HIV/AIDS properly.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

David Chaytor: If he will make a statement on the peace process in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Hilary Benn: Conflict resolution in Africa is a key priority for the UK Government. We continue to be actively engaged with our African, EU and UN partners in promoting the peace process in the great lakes region, and in supporting the transitional national Government in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was installed in June last year—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. There are important matters before the House. Hon. Members should be quiet.

Hilary Benn: This is a major step forward for peace and stability. We also continue to work for improved relations between DRC and its neighbours, which is critical to peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

David Chaytor: In the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more than 3 million people were killed and almost 3.5 million people were displaced. This is a conflict in which cannibalism and rape were used as weapons of war. What assessment has my right hon. Friend made of the incidence of HIV/AIDS as a result of the conflict, and what steps is he taking to deal with this problem in the DRC?

Hilary Benn: My hon. Friend is right to characterise what has happened in the DRC in that way. It is for that reason that it has been described as Africa's hidden first world war. HIV/AIDS is a problem, and part of the programme that we are undertaking involves work on dealing with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. However, the single biggest challenge that the DRC faces is for the transitional Government to establish in the minds of the people the idea of a state, and the idea that there might be something called government that could have something to offer to the people of a country that has never had a Government. Now is therefore the moment for the international community to come in and support the transitional Government, and that is why the UK's aid programme in the DRC is increasing substantially.

John Redwood: It so often appears that Africa is the forgotten continent when it comes to the international community's response. Will the Secretary of State use the good offices of the British Government to get the UN to take the problems of Africa in general, and the Congo in particular, far more seriously, and to put some energy into resolving conflicts and establishing the good governance for which that continent is crying out?

Hilary Benn: I do not think that there is a shortage of energy, effort or interest in that regard. Indeed, the most important development that has taken place in recent years has involved the energy, effort and interest shown by the countries of Africa themselves through the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa's Development. If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the work that Said Djinnit, the peace and security commissioner, is now undertaking on the peace and security protocol, at the force that is in Burundi, at the work that has been done to put troops into Liberia, and at the effort being made to deploy monitors in Darfur, he will see that they are all signs of the steps that need to be taken. They also demonstrate that Africa is now acting to help itself, which is something that the whole House will welcome.

Kaliningrad

Gordon Marsden: What recent discussions he has had with EU partners on programmes to support the development of civil society in Kaliningrad.

Gareth Thomas: I have not been involved in any recent discussions with EU partners on programmes specifically to support the development of civil society in Kaliningrad. However, the Department is funding work on HIV prevention in Kaliningrad through our work on HIV/AIDS harm reduction in many regions across Russia. The work is being carried out by the Open Health Institute, a Russian non-governmental organisation, which is channelling funding through civil society organisations in the region.

Gordon Marsden: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. He will be aware that the accession this month of the Baltic states to the EU throws into sharp relief the particular problematic issues with regard to Kaliningrad. I am grateful for the work that is being done, but may I urge my hon. Friend to press for a stronger profile within the EU on issues in Kaliningrad, particularly social inclusion, fighting organised crime and HIV/AIDS, bearing in mind that these are issues in which the EU now has a self-interest as well as a humanitarian interest in relation to Kaliningrad and Russia?

Gareth Thomas: I am happy to assure my hon. Friend that the EU is taking these issues extremely seriously. Some €25 million of the national programme of technical assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States funding for Russia has been earmarked to support the economic and social development of Kaliningrad.

PRIME MINISTER

The Prime Minister was asked—

Engagements

David Heath: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 12 May.

Tony Blair: Before I list my engagements, I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in expressing our condolences to the families and friends of those who have been killed and injured following the explosion yesterday at the Stockline Plastics factory in Glasgow. This tragedy took place in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Ann McKechin), but I know that it will affect yours, too, Mr. Speaker. I also pay tribute to our emergency services, as they continue in their efforts to search for survivors. I understand that Scotland's First Minister, Jack McConnell, will be visiting the site today.
	In respect of my engagements, this morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I will have further such meetings later today.

David Heath: The whole House will join the Prime Minister in his earlier comments.
	Over recent days, substantial harm has been done to Britain's reputation, and our troops in Iraq have been put at greater risk. Are we really to believe that such an able and experienced diplomat as Sir Jeremy Greenstock could have been aware of a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross detailing systematic humiliation and abuse of detainees by our coalition partners, yet not ask to see it, fail to recognise its significance, and not bring it to the attention of the Prime Minister or any other Minister? Did no one feel that it was appropriate to make any representations whatever to the United States Administration about what was being done by coalition forces in our name?

Tony Blair: In respect of the circumstances in which the report came to Sir Jeremy Greenstock's office, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary stated those circumstances clearly yesterday. In respect of the abuses, however, let me point out—I will do so in greater detail later—to the hon. Gentleman and others, that in respect of the Red Cross report, the incidents of abuse in respect of British troops were already being investigated. When dealing with this issue, it is important to realise that in respect of British troops, I know of no evidence of systematic abuse of detainees.

Helen Liddell: You will be aware, Mr. Speaker, that 10 years ago today my constituency lost a much-admired Member of Parliament, and this nation lost a great leader. John Smith was a decent man committed to social justice. Does the Prime Minister recall that a few months before John's death, he laid out his priorities for a Labour Government? Those were the restoration and improvement of the national health service, the fight against poverty here and in the developing world, and his commitment to completing the unfinished business of devolution. Does he agree with me that the achievements of his Government are part of John Smith's legacy, and that in his memory we must go on and achieve even more for social justice?

Tony Blair: I am sure that my right hon. Friend's comments about John Smith will be agreed and accepted, certainly on the Labour Benches, and probably on both sides of the House. I like to think that the record on jobs and the reduction of unemployment particularly, and of course the introduction of a minimum wage, are two things of which he would have been immensely proud.

Michael Howard: Following yesterday's dreadful explosion in Glasgow, I join the Prime Minister in expressing the Conservative party's deep sympathy with those who were injured and with the families of those who lost their lives. I also join him in paying tribute to the work that the emergency services have done and, indeed, are doing as we speak.
	As for Iraq, everyone has been horrified by the appalling murder of Mr. Berg. It reinforces the need for coalition forces to succeed in their difficult task in that country.
	The Red Cross report on the treatment of detainees in Iraq was given to the British Government in February. When did the Prime Minister first see it?

Tony Blair: I first saw it on Monday. I did not know of the allegations in the report at the time. As I explained a moment ago, in so far as they concerned British troops those allegations were already being dealt with. The report was not passed to Ministers in February.

Michael Howard: The Red Cross report was presented at a meeting attended by representatives of the Prime Minister's special envoy to Iraq on 26 February. London was informed of that meeting the next day. The report contained the most devastating allegations of mistreatment of detainees in Iraq. The report and the allegations in it have led to the greatest crisis in Iraq since the war ended, and have added immeasurably to the dangers and difficulties faced by coalition forces—including British troops—in carrying out their duties. Can the Prime Minister explain why he did not see the report for three months?

Tony Blair: First, let me make it clear—as I have on many occasions over the past few days—that we condemn, completely and unequivocally, any abuse of Iraqi detainees or prisoners by anyone—any part of the coalition. In respect of British troops, let me now set out the position clearly.
	According to the Red Cross report, there were three instances of abuse—or allegations of abuse—in respect of British troops and those in detention. One concerned the death in custody of Mr. Mousa, which was already being investigated. The second concerned the hooding of prisoners, a practice that had already been stopped by February. The last concerned the theft of a car, and the issue was not pursued.
	As for civilians killed or injured, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has made clear, 33 cases have been investigated. Twenty-one of those investigations are complete, and 12 are ongoing. In 15 of the 21 cases it was found that there was no case to answer. In respect of six there were recommendations, and the Military Police will announce shortly what will happen about those six. Amnesty International has passed eight cases to us, seven of which are already known to us. The one that is not known to us is being investigated.
	Let me make something absolutely clear—and I will come to American troops in a moment: there is no evidence whatever either of systematic abuse or of Ministers or anyone else refusing to act on allegations of abuse in respect of detainees in British custody. On the contrary, the only evidence that has been presented consists of photographs that are almost certainly fake.
	Before I come to American troops, let me say this. I believe that we should be proud of the part that British troops have played in Iraq, that they should be proud of themselves, and that this country can be proud of them.
	In respect of the other allegations, it is not correct that Ministers or I were aware of those allegations in respect of American troops. The ICRC report was not passed to us, as has already been made clear. In any event, however, I think it fair to point out that in January—a month before the report—Major-General Taguba was tasked by the Americans to look into claims of abuse, particularly at Abu Ghraib prison, for a period of time. Investigations were already proceeding, and 17 United States soldiers had already been suspended. Indeed, the first American soldiers were charged with abuse back in May 2003.
	I simply say to the House that any abuse by any coalition forces is completely unacceptable. What is not true is that allegations were made and nothing happened in respect of them.

Michael Howard: Of course, we are all immensely proud of what British troops are doing in Iraq, but the Prime Minister has failed to give any explanation for why he did not see this crucial report, which was presented to his special envoy to Iraq, for nearly three months. I am afraid that the country will conclude that there is no sensible explanation for that fact.
	Iraq is by far the most sensitive and difficult challenge facing the country. People want to know that their Government have a grip on what they are doing and on what is going on. A devastating Red Cross report is sent to the Government in February. The Armed Forces Minister says that he has never seen it. The Defence Secretary says that he would not have expected to see it. The Foreign Secretary says that he should have seen it but he did not, and the Prime Minister, to whose special envoy the report was given, says that he knew nothing about it. How can the people of this country have confidence in this Prime Minister and his Government?

Tony Blair: First of all, the reason I did not raise the issues in this report is that I did not see it. The explanation for not seeing it has already been given. It is that, in respect of the issues concerning Britain and detainees in British custody, these issues had already been dealt with and we were expecting—indeed, we have received—a further Red Cross report about people in British custody. When the right hon. and learned Gentleman attempts to extract the maximum political mischief—[Interruption]—absolutely: let no one be in any doubt of that at all—I would just point out this to him. The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is this. It is not that, in a democracy, bad things do not happen. It is that, when they do happen, action is taken. Action has been taken in respect of each of these allegations in respect of British troops, and I think now is the time to support the work that our troops are doing.

Roger Casale: My right hon. Friend will be aware, with the publication of today's unemployment figures, that 409,000 more people are in work in London now than were in work there in 1997. May I remind him that many thousands work in the arts and culture sector? Will he continue to increase significantly this Government's investment in the arts both in London and across the country? Will he give particular attention to involving and engaging young people in the arts and to providing training opportunities for them in the arts, so that that cultural regeneration can be a spur to the economic renewal of Britain?

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend is right, of course, that the arts make a huge contribution to London, and let us not forget either London's bid for the Olympic games in 2012. London, as a capital city, offers us a great advantage because of its emphasis on arts and creativity and, indeed, we are increasing investment in the arts.
	My hon. Friend is right in saying that employment is at a record high. Today's figures show that 1.95 million more people are in work today than were in work seven years ago. That is an extra job created for every two minutes that we have been in government. That stands in sharp contrast to the record of the Conservative party, which took unemployment to over 3 million.

Charles Kennedy: I add my sympathy to the families of all those who have been either injured or killed in the terrible accident in Glasgow, and pay tribute to the fire and other emergency service personnel for their continuing work. We hope that they are yet able to rescue more people from that dreadful rubble.
	I return to the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Can the Prime Minister confirm, as it itself has confirmed, that the report was the culmination of a series of reports detailing alleged abuse of prisoners that dated back to April 2003? So, over this entire period, what action was taken about those reports?

Tony Blair: It is correct, as the Red Cross points out, that these reports are the culmination of a series of discussions that it had with the detaining authority. Of course, the report was passed to the provisional authority in respect of detention, and we got a copy of the report. Already we have been in discussion with the Red Cross. The reason why I have detailed all the instances where allegations have been made and investigations then made is to show that on each occasion on which allegations have been made or issues raised, we have acted. Indeed, on the allegation in the Red Cross report in respect of the practice of hooding prisoners, which is sometimes necessary for security reasons but should not be done for purposes of interrogation, that practice was stopped. It was stopped before we ever received the Red Cross report. I think that it is important to realise that on each occasion on which the Red Cross has raised issues, we have dealt with them.
	May I also draw the House's attention to the fact that the Red Cross, which we would be pleased to have return at any point in time at which it wished to check our detention facilities—indeed, we would be pleased for it to have a permanent presence at our facilities should it wish that—has recently written to us, during the past few weeks, to say that it believes that the conditions of internment now in the facilities run by the British are "fairly good" and that it was generally satisfied to see that most of the recommendations submitted during its previous visit had been taken into consideration? We are in a process of dialogue with the Red Cross all the time. All that I would say is that on each occasion on which allegations have been made, they have been properly answered.

Charles Kennedy: But the Prime Minister will of course recognise the huge and mounting public concern in this country about the increasingly grotesque reports that have been coming out of Iraq. That being the case, can the Prime Minister confirm that any further deployment of British forces there would take place only at the request of the British commanders on the ground, and that that would be only for the purposes of enabling them to fulfil more effectively the role that they are currently undertaking?

Tony Blair: The question of whether troops are needed in Iraq is something, as I have explained before, that we keep under constant review, as we should. The question is what is in the interests of the progress in Iraq being sustained, maintained and seen through to its conclusion. I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that yes, I agree that the events of the past few days have of course been immensely damaging. All that I am doing is pointing out that it is not true to say that nothing has been done when these allegations have been made. I also think that it is right to say, on behalf of all the troops there, that the vast majority of them are doing a superb job in helping people in Iraq.

Rosemary McKenna: My right hon. Friend will be aware of the very unhappy lives led by the children of drug-addicted parents—many tens of thousands of them across the UK. Urgent action is needed to address the complex issues that surround the children of drug-addicted parents. Will he undertake an inquiry, involving all the relevant agencies including the devolved Administrations, into how we can deal with that problem, with the children as the priority?

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend raises an important point. Part of the purpose of programmes such as Sure Start, and the work that is being done in local communities and children's centres, is precisely to help the children of parents who are drug abusers. I think that my hon. Friend will recognise that as a result, far more concerted action has been taken in respect of those children. We talk about those issues with the devolved Administrations, who have executive responsibility for them. The new proposals that we are taking forward now on drug abuse, and on drug abuse in the criminal justice system, will also help to reduce the number of drug abusers, and ensure that we are tackling what I accept is an important and serious question.

Dominic Grieve: The Government have backed down from their intention to oust the jurisdiction of the courts in asylum cases, and have instead adopted a statutory review procedure, as earlier advocated by the Conservatives and utterly rubbished by the Home Secretary. Is the Prime Minister pleased or regretful about that?

Tony Blair: I will tell the hon. Gentleman exactly what I think. It would have been better had we been able to proceed with the original proposals, but it was obvious that we could not get a majority for them in the House of Lords because the Conservatives, among others, were opposing those measures. But I have to tell him that the measures that we are taking on asylum are reducing the numbers. I only wish that we got the same support in reality from the Conservatives as they try to pretend they are giving by their rhetoric.

Mike Hall: The figures released today show that unemployment in my constituency has fallen by 50 per cent. since 1997, with only 1,321 people now registered as unemployed. It is quite clear that Weaver Vale is benefiting from a very well run economy, but if we are to have continuing economic growth and regeneration, the north-west needs major investment in its transport infrastructure. In particular, we need a new crossing across the River Mersey in the borough of Halton. Will my right hon. Friend please look into this proposal and so make sure that we enjoy economic growth and continuing low unemployment for many years to come?

Tony Blair: I understand that proposals for a new Mersey crossing are currently being considered; my hon. Friend will understand that I would not want to pre-empt any decision that might be made. He is absolutely right, however, to say that unemployment is at what is a record low for many decades, both on Merseyside and elsewhere. Incidentally, one reason why we have been able to reduce unemployment is of course the new deal programme for the unemployed, which has helped literally hundreds of thousands of people into work. That is why I find it so regrettable that the Conservative party is committed to scrapping the new deal.

Michael Howard: The Prime Minister is aware of the widespread support from all parts of the House for compensating the 60,000 people who have lost significant pension benefits as a result of the collapse of their schemes. It seems that it will take a prime ministerial decision to compensate them. He has given hints that he will act. Will he now do so?

Tony Blair: I am afraid that I have nothing to add to what I said earlier, which is that we continue to examine what the full consequences would be of any compensation package. Obviously, we have to make allowances for what is actually affordable in this situation, but I do understand the plight of people who have joined occupational pension schemes, and who had no option but to join those schemes as a condition of their employment. That is why I hope that we will be in a position very shortly to announce some results.

Michael Howard: The trouble is that time is running out. [Interruption.] No—

Mr. Speaker: Order. You might have to leave the Chamber, Mr. King, if you keep shouting like that. I have said this to you before. Such shouting is unfair to the Leader of the Opposition.

Michael Howard: This is actually not a party political point. There is support from all quarters of the House for this measure. I know how difficult it is—[Interruption.] If the Prime Minister will listen. I know how difficult it is to agree to compensation retrospectively, and it is important not to set too many precedents. I understand all that, but on this issue, a majority of Members of this House have signed Commons motions calling for compensation.
	Three weeks ago, the Prime Minister told the House that this issue was being actively considered, and that he hoped the Government would come forward with a solution. Two weeks ago, he said that he hoped to come back to the House as soon as possible. The Pensions Bill has just completed seven weeks in Committee, and despite ample opportunity, the Government have tabled no proposals to tackle the problem. The Bill is due back in the House next week. Will he now undertake to table practical proposals to deal with this problem before then?

Tony Blair: I am afraid that I have nothing to add to what I said earlier, which is that I will announce shortly what we are able to do for people. I have to say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I somehow find it worse when he is being reasonable than when he is being his normal self. I am sure that he will want to acknowledge, in this spirit of reasonable exchange between us, that the pension protection fund legislation is the first time that a Government have introduced pension protections for people. I am aware that he is saying that he wishes that we could go even further and make this retrospective as well as prospective. That is precisely what we are looking at, and as I said, I shall come back on this issue as soon as possible. But I know that he will want to acknowledge that this Government have introduced what is ground-breaking legislation.

Michael Howard: The Prime Minister is right: this Government have introduced legislation—to deal with a problem that has arisen under this Government. [Interruption.] The 60,000 people who are losing their pension entitlement, about which I am asking this question, are not losing it under a Conservative Government. It was not a Conservative Chancellor who imposed £5 billion a year taxes on pensions. The problem has arisen under the present Government. Hon. Members of all parties on both sides of the House—a clear majority—want action taken to deal with this problem. Why will the Prime Minister not give an undertaking that it will be dealt with by the legislation of which he is so proud?

Tony Blair: First, I definitely prefer the right hon. and learned Gentleman like that. It is far more true to his character. As I said, we shall shortly announce what we are able to do. Since we are talking about records on pensions, has the right hon. and learned Gentleman forgotten the 9 million people who lost pension rights under the last Conservative Government? Perhaps he has also forgotten the pension mis-selling scandal and the fact that his right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor has said that there will be a real-terms cash freeze in all budgets, including the budget with responsibility for pensions.

Jon Owen Jones: When we last invaded Mesopotamia in 1914, it took us 44 years to get out, during which time we made many mistakes—not least the configuration of the state that we left behind. At least we were responsible for our mistakes and for the timing and conditions by which we left. To what degree do we retain any independent responsibility to arrange for the timing by which we leave?

Tony Blair: Let me say to my hon. Friend that now may be the moment to go back to first principles. It is surely better that Iraq is no longer governed by Saddam Hussein. Let us all agree on that for a start. If the action to remove Saddam had not been taken, he would still be in power. I have to accept responsibility for the position that the country and I are in today, because I am the Prime Minister who brought it about. I will defend that position. Those who have opposed the conflict must also accept that if we had listened to their opposition, Saddam Hussein would still be in power.
	My hon. Friend should not listen to what I, the Americans or anyone else says, but to Iraqi voices. Those Iraqi voices will tell my hon. Friend and other hon. Members two things: one, that they are delighted that they have been liberated from Saddam Hussein; and, two, that they want the coalition forces to leave Iraq as soon as possible. That is precisely what we are discussing now. We have a security strategy, which is to develop the Iraqi-isation of the security forces in Iraq— the police, civil defence and army. We also have a political process, which is to be sanctioned and undertaken by the United Nations. That is our strategy and we will not leave until the job is properly done and until we have made sure that the wish of the Iraqis for a sovereign, stable and democratic Iraq is delivered.

Martin Smyth: On behalf of the people of Belfast, I sympathise with our Glaswegian friends who have suffered in yesterday's tragedy. I also agree with the Prime Minister that we should support the Army, because it is important not to give them a job to do and then stab them in the back. The Prime Minister referred to Saddam, and I believe that the dastardly murder of Mr. Berg shows the other side of terrorism that we have experienced in Northern Ireland. We have seen it elsewhere. Can we have a commitment from the Government that they will not leave the Iraqis to suffer from any such body in the future and that they will not yield again to terrorist demands in Northern Ireland?

Tony Blair: I completely agree with what the hon. Gentleman says. It is worth pointing out—it was implicit in his question—that there are circumstances in which British troops are risking their lives day in, day out. If the House will allow me, I would like to quote what Iraqis themselves have said about British troops. For example, the Iraqi Foreign Minister said:
	"We . . . expressed our gratitude . . . to the British forces for the job they are doing. We are very proud of them, and the British people also should be very proud of them."
	The mayor of Basra, speaking yesterday, said:
	"In fact we have not registered a single case of human-rights violations at prison or in terms of actions by the British forces".
	I hope that people understand that that is not our view, but the view of ordinary Iraqis whom British forces are helping.

Huw Irranca-Davies: In my constituency, the creation of more than 1,000 new manufacturing jobs has been announced in the past few weeks. That builds on the work of the action team for jobs, on the new deal and on the roll-out of Jobcentre Plus. What response would my right hon. Friend give to those—especially those on the Opposition Benches—who say that such initiatives to help people to get back into work are a waste of time and money?

Tony Blair: We can see how Opposition Members respond—they are all walking out of the Chamber. It is absolutely extraordinary. The fact is that almost 2 million jobs have been created since this Government came to power. That is one job for every two minutes for which we have been in government. Unemployment is lower than it has been for 30 years, and hundreds of thousands of people—including young people in particular—who were consigned to the scrap heap under the Conservatives have been given the chance to have a decent life and proper living standards, and the ability to raise their families in some sort of dignity. That is the difference between a Labour Government and a Tory one.

Points of Order

Roger Gale: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will know that last evening the House debated Government business until about 7.20 pm. Thereafter, the House began an open-ended debate on a House of Commons issue, on a free vote. Before 10 pm, with hon. Members still wishing to speak, a Government Whip moved a closure motion. The occupant of the Chair, as he was entitled to, chose to accept that motion, and I have no quarrel with that. The motion then put to the House was, "That the Question be now put". That motion was carried by a considerable majority, but the main Question was not then put to the House. A decision on it was deferred until today, although it should properly have been voted on last night. As a result, only 3 per cent. of Members of the House of Commons were present to hear the debate, for which the main Question will be voted on, on paper, today. Mr. Speaker, can you rule that, in future, if a closure motion is moved, the vote on the main Question must be taken forthwith?

Oliver Heald: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I draw your attention to today's Order Paper? It shows that, again, we will probably be debating business of the House after 7 o'clock, and that a motion concerning deferred Divisions is down for debate. I seek your guidance on this matter: if we are discussing the business of the House, is the deferred Division procedure appropriate? All hon. Members should be able to have their say about the business of the House.

Eric Forth: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker—

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will let me answer the first point raised by the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale), as otherwise I might forget what it was. In a sense, the hon. Gentleman made a very valid point, but the Question that was put yesterday was whether the House should vote on the matter under consideration. That matter was subject to the deferred Division procedure. However, the rules are flexible, and that flexibility can be achieved by means of discussion through the usual channels. It is not for me to decide such matters, as I am guided by the House. In future, the usual channels can request that a Division on a motion should not be deferred, but taken there and then. As the hon. Gentleman said, it is more likely that those who have heard the case made in the debate on a House matter will be able to vote when a Division is held immediately.
	That brings me to the point raised by the shadow Leader of the House. He is part of the usual channels. I am not, so I place on him some of the burden in respect of these matters in future.

Eric Forth: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sure that we are all very grateful for that advice, and I hope that it has been heard and taken to heart. Can you also confirm that in the event that an amendment is selected to a motion that would otherwise be subject to a deferred Division, the motion must then be voted on in the proper way, immediately following the debate? Members may wish to be conscious of that further procedural possibility, as I am sure you are.

Mr. Speaker: One can always depend on a Glasgow man to know procedure. The right hon. Gentleman is right, but when I consider amendments—as I considered the amendments he tabled last night—I do not take into consideration whether they are attached to a motion subject to a deferred Division. Therefore, that thought would not cross my mind one way or the other.

Interest Rates (Limits on Charges)

Adam Price: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to impose limits on the interest rate and associated charges which may be charged by those providing loans and other forms of credit.
	My Bill seeks to tackle what has been described as the silent sickness of spiralling indebtedness which is afflicting more and more people in our society, particularly the poorest and the most vulnerable. There can be no doubt that mounting personal debt is causing severe problems for an increasing number of families. The Bank of England published figures for March that showed that once repayments were taken into account, outstanding debt on credit cards, loans and overdrafts rose by £1.68 billion in a single month. So it should come as no surprise that, increasingly, many people are getting into severe difficulties, sometimes with tragic consequences.
	According to Citizens Advice, inquiries from people seeking debt counselling have risen by 44 per cent. over the past six years. Some 6.4 million people suffer from emotional and physical trauma caused by debt, according to latest data from Debt Free Direct. Almost 500,000 people have developed a drinking problem and some 250,000 have turned to gambling as a perceived solution to their ongoing financial difficulties. More than 1 million people with debt problems have seen relationships with their partners end in separation or divorce. Even the Financial Services Authority has admitted that almost 7 million people are already struggling to meet monthly repayments.
	There are many different dimensions to the growing problem of debt. One is the easy availability of credit; unsolicited credit card offers and even cheque books are pushed through people's letterboxes daily. We remember the infamous case of Monty the shih tzu, from Stockport, who was recently offered a gold card with a credit limit of £10,000 by the Royal Bank of Scotland. There is also the lack of transparency in credit contracts and the difficulty in comparing annual percentage rates. The Treasury Committee covered the issue extensively in its recent report.
	If we are to understand the problem of escalating debt that faces many people, we must consider a much more fundamental issue, which my Bill seeks to address: the cost of credit. Consumers, especially those on low incomes, pay a substantially higher price for credit than is warranted by the costs involved or the associated lending risks. In layman's terms, credit card companies and others are ripping people off, and destroying lives in the process.
	The House does not have to take my word for that. We have it on the good authority of Mr. Matthew Barrett, the group chief executive of Barclays bank, who said in evidence to the Treasury Committee that he would not borrow on credit cards because it was too expensive. When it comes to gilt-edged admissions of corporate irresponsibility, that is up there with Gerald Ratner. The ironic aspect of Mr. Barrett's comments is that he probably can afford the repayments. It is the poorer households that are hit the hardest, because they owe the most relative to their income and pay the most for the privilege.
	According to Debt on Your Doorstep, more than 3 million people on very low incomes have to borrow money at interest rates of between 150 and 200 per cent. per annum. A recent study by the Office of Fair Trading found that some store cards carried a charge of as much as 32 per cent., and similar rates are charged on unauthorised overdrafts. It was recently revealed in The Guardian that there have been trials in Scotland of a new Visa card, the Vanquis, which charges an APR of 64.9 per cent.—more than 16 times the Bank of England base rate. To be fair, the Department of Trade and Industry has published a White Paper, which contained some good ideas for cracking down on loan sharks and better protection against unfair credit deals, and the OFT has made a study of store cards.
	The one thing that the Government have so far shied away from—the reason for my Bill—is the introduction of a maximum interest rate that lenders can charge. Since the introduction of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, the UK has had no statutory ceiling for interest rates. There was a 48 per cent. per annum limit but, unfortunately, the Act abolished it. Currently, the only protection under the Act for consumers who have got into difficulty is that lenders cannot charge "extortionate" interest rates. That is of little assistance to people who cannot afford to go to court and when there is no legal definition of "extortionate". A case in 1995 suggested that rates of 44 per cent. were bordering on extortionate but, in 30 years, consumers have won only 10 cases under the Act.
	There are statutory caps in most northern European countries and in north America. In Austria, the cap is set at 20 per cent. per annum; it is 7 per cent. in Belgium and Finland, 9 per cent. in Greece and 15 per cent. in Switzerland. There are also caps in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and many US states.
	One argument advanced against a cap is that it might restrict the amount of credit for low-income households, driving them into the arms of unlicensed lenders. However, although the UK has by far the highest exclusion rate in northern Europe for financial services for people on low incomes, we have the weakest standards of consumer protection. Low-income households have better access to credit in countries where there is a cap.
	Clearly, for a cap to be successful, it must allow a realistic rate for the lender but one that is low enough to benefit the consumer. It has been suggested that the cap could be expressed as the Bank of England base rate plus x per cent. where x is set at a level that covers the risk posed to firms. Provided that issuers make an adequate rate of return under the cap, they will continue to offer credit, because the cap would be set at a rate higher than the cost of offering the credit. In that scenario, customers will benefit. They will continue to obtain credit, and they will get it at a lower and fairer price.
	It has been suggested that there could be attempts to evade the cap by raising fees and other charges. However, my Bill would not merely cap interest rates; it would also cover fees and charges in a single calculation of the cost of credit. Furthermore, it would introduce a cap on interest on arrears, which affects so many people who have got into difficulty, and on collection charges in the event of default.
	Above all, my Bill would ease the burden of debt for those least able to bear it, and for that reason I commend it to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Adam Price, Tony Lloyd, Harry Cohen, Mr. Huw Edwards, Mr. Frank Field, Sue Doughty, Alan Simpson, David Taylor, Mr. Roger Williams, Annabelle Ewing, Mr. Elfyn Llwyd and Sir Teddy Taylor.

Interest Rates (Limits on Charges)

Adam Price accordingly presented a Bill to impose limits on the interest rate and associated charges which may be charged by those providing loans and other forms of credit: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 18 June, and to be printed [Bill 107].

Orders of the Day
	 — 
	Age-Related Payments Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Malcolm Wicks: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	This Bill will put in place the promise in the Budget to pay all eligible households with someone aged 70 or over an extra £100 this year. Of course, this measure has already been subject to some debate following the Chancellor's Budget speech. When combined with winter fuel payments, it will mean that households with someone over 70 will get up to £300 later this year and households with someone over 80 will receive £400.
	The payment will be neither taxable nor income tested. It will not affect the other benefits that a pensioner may receive. For example, it will not reduce the amount of council tax benefit, housing benefit or pension credit. In particular, by making this one-off payment, we are recognising the impact of recent council tax increases on the fixed incomes of older pensioners. It will also help with their other living expenses.

Christopher Chope: Can the Minister explain how the Bill will help pensioner households where someone over 70 now lives if, come September, that person has died, leaving a widow under 70 in that household? Will that household still qualify for the £100 payment, which is clearly what the Chancellor implied in his statement; or is the letter of the Bill, which suggests that that household will not get £100, the truth?

Malcolm Wicks: The payment will go to those who meet the requirements during the qualifying week. Of course, there will be exceptions—the hon. Gentleman mentions one—but I hope that he will listen and understand that the payment will be a great benefit to a number of vulnerable, elderly households in this country.

Patrick McLoughlin: Will the Minister give way?

Malcolm Wicks: I will give way in a moment.
	We are aware of the concern felt by many people, especially those on low incomes, about council tax increases. On 5 February, Parliament approved the local government finance settlement for the 2004–05 financial year. The settlement provides a general grant increase of 5.5 per cent. and an overall increase of 7.3 per cent. Since taking office, we have increased funding to councils by 30 per cent. in real terms. That contrasts with a 7 per cent. real-terms cut during the last four years of the previous Government—which perhaps will now be explained.

Patrick McLoughlin: I would love to explain that, but Mr. Speaker might rule me out of order if I did so. Will the Minister tell us why the Bill refers only to 2004? Are the Government thinking of getting rid of the council tax?

Malcolm Wicks: We are legislating for this year only. Of course, such things are of real concern, as I was arguing, to those who face high council tax increases. [Interruption]. As I am being provoked, perhaps I can say something about the average council tax increases per dwelling in 2004–05. In Labour councils, they are likely to be £870; in Liberal Democrat councils, £971; and in Conservative councils, £1,072.

Paul Beresford: Will the Minister give way?

Malcolm Wicks: I will give way, because perhaps a word of explanation, or even apology, is coming up.

Paul Beresford: If there is to be an apology, it must come from the Government—the shifting of the grant explains the biased way in which the grant has been applied to many local authorities. The Minister may be interested to hear that the Select Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister yesterday met a number of people, including from the "Is It Fair?" campaign and pensioners groups. They blame the Government for the council tax rise.

Malcolm Wicks: I always take seriously the interventions of the hon. Gentleman, who used to be a fellow Croydon MP before the electorate decided otherwise. In the south-east, there have been more generous grant increases than in other parts of the country, which should have benefited many Conservative authorities.
	By making this one-off payment, we are recognising the concerns that I have discussed, including the way in which local authorities controlled by different parties have increased council tax. We are encouraged that this year's average increase of 5.9 per cent. is less than half the increase last year and is the lowest in almost a decade. We made it clear that we would use our powers to cap excessive increases in council tax in 2004–05, and that strong message has already had an effect—councils have set lower council tax increases this year than would otherwise have been the case.

Michael Weir: Given that the Minister is making a powerful case about the purpose of the payment to help with excessive council tax bills, should the Government not look at an alternative to council tax instead of trying to buy off pensioners for one year only?

Malcolm Wicks: Some increases remain excessive, so we are using our powers to cap. The Government are reluctant to cap, but we cannot stand back and allow excessive council tax increases to take place year after year. Help with council tax is, of course, already available to pensioners and other people in the form of council tax benefit. We expect nearly 2 million pensioner households to benefit from increases in their council tax benefit or to become newly entitled to it as a result of the introduction of pension credit.

Andrew Bennett: While the proposals in the Bill are welcome, is my hon. Friend not concerned that almost 50 per cent. of pensioner households are not claiming the council tax benefit to which they are entitled? What is his Department doing to ensure 100 per cent. take-up of that benefit?

Malcolm Wicks: I know that my hon. Friend was not prompted by anyone to ask that question, but it leads into what I was going to say. We are extremely keen to ensure that all pensioners entitled to help with their council tax bills claim the benefit, which is why the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond), launched a campaign on 1 March 2004 to help support local authorities to encourage everyone who may be entitled to help with their council tax to claim the benefit. We have issued a new poster and flyer, and have sent mailing packs to local authorities, our own local offices and advisers, as well as to local branches of Help the Aged, Age Concern, Citizens Advice and the National Pensioners Convention across Great Britain. We will follow that up with press advertising over a three-week period in regional and some national titles.
	In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett), I concede that for too long council tax benefit has been one of the more obscure and less understood benefits. We are now taking significant steps to publicise it because, as with all income-tested benefits, we want to drive up take-up.

Michael Weir: Would the Minister urge the Pension Service to advise pensioners about council tax benefit when they apply for tax credit, as that does not always happen at present? It would be helpful if pensioners could have a one-stop shop offering advice on all those benefits.

Malcolm Wicks: I agree that in general we need to move towards the notion of one-stop shops. The Pension Service is now sending out forms for council tax benefit along with news about the pension credit, so we are taking action. We need to take more steps, but I am particularly proud of the local services of the Pension Service, which have been welcomed by Members on both sides of the House. They are very much the human face of the Pension Service and are collaborating with various organisations on the Bill and other measures.

Nigel Waterson: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, as I appreciate that he wants to make progress. When did he first become aware that the payment required primary legislation?

Malcolm Wicks: That is a favourite question at the moment. I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with as much precision as I can. Our early thinking was that legislation would not be necessary, but lawyers—

Eric Forth: Not good enough.

Malcolm Wicks: I am being heckled by a well known heckler, but some of us want to have a grown-up debate. I am trying to answer the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson), so perhaps the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) would listen along with his Front-Bench spokesman. After legal advice, we realised that in fact we needed primary legislation, which is why we introduced the Bill.

Henry Bellingham: We have always had civilised dialogue with the Minister in the past, so could he tell the House the extra cost of having to legislate? Is a figure available for the cost of legal advice, the deployment of civil service resources, printing, time taken and so on?

Malcolm Wicks: I do not think that there is a figure to hand. We may receive an explanation from the hon. Member for Eastbourne, the Conservative spokesman, but I am not sure why the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) is puzzled. We obviously operate on a legal footing. If the payments could have been made through regulations, we would have taken that route. The legal advice, however, was that we needed primary legislation. It is the purpose of Parliament to debate primary legislation, which is why we are here today.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Malcolm Wicks: I need to make progress soon, but first I shall give way to the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb), the Liberal Democrat spokesman.

Steve Webb: To return to the point about timing, one has a slight sense that the decision was made rather late in day. The Minister said he would write to the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson), but can he tell us when the Department for Work and Pensions became aware of the Chancellor's intention to make the payment?

Malcolm Wicks: I said that I would do my best to let the hon. Member for Eastbourne know exactly when we realised that primary legislation was necessary, but I am not in a position to write up in one long letter any modest diaries that I may have kept as a Minister. I suspect that it would not be a bestseller, and would be a step too far.
	We believe that it is particularly important to target pensioners over 70, as most people in that age group have long since stopped working and are on fixed incomes, so are disproportionately affected by council tax increases, which often take up a larger portion of their income compared with younger households. The evidence supports that conclusion, and our own experience as Members of Parliament is that the very elderly tend to be more financially disadvantaged than people in their 60s. We shall take steps to ensure that the administration of the payments runs smoothly, which is why they will be administered through the tried and tested winter fuel payments system.
	The hon. Member for North-West Norfolk, who asked about costs, will be interested to know that the age-related payment will be included with the winter fuel payment, which is currently made to more than 11 million people. That will also keep administrative costs to a minimum—not more, we estimate, than £6.8 million. The entitlement and payment rules are set out in the Bill. To keep the process simple and transparent, there will be no need to make a claim in the vast majority of cases. People over 70 should get their payment automatically if they have received a winter fuel payment before and their circumstances have not changed, or if they claimed a winter fuel payment this year. We will do all that we can to ensure that the very small number of people who need to make a claim are made aware of the payment and are given the opportunity to receive it.
	Although we intend to make the payment for one year only, the Bill provides a regulation-making power so that, if circumstances warrant it, future payments may be made to people over 60 in specified groups. It stipulates that any such regulations will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, and will therefore be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny as well as scrutiny and investigation by the Social Security Advisory Committee.

David Wilshire: The Minister said that the payments were for this year only. In the almost certain event that the Government make a further mess of local government finance and force even greater increases in council tax, will he return to the House next year to increase the £100 as compensation?

Malcolm Wicks: I do not accept that Tory hypothesis at all, so it would be ludicrous to try to answer a question more in the realm of social science fiction than fact.
	Let me remind the House of the Government's record on pensioner issues. It is this Government who have made sure that no pensioner need live on less than £105 a week for a single pensioner and £160 for a couple. When we came to office in 1997 the amounts were just £75.80 for a single pensioner and £115.15 for a couple. I am sure hon. Members will want to reflect on that contrasting record in their own speeches.

Henry Bellingham: I accept what the Minister says, but is he aware that the majority of pensioners in constituencies such as mine are worried about the extent of means-testing that is going on? I appreciate that the payments under discussion will not be means-tested, which is a plus point. How many pensioners are now means-tested? What is the total figure, and what was the figure five years ago?

Malcolm Wicks: I had intended to deal with our record on pension credit, albeit briefly, to provide some context. As a result of pension credit and the other measures we have introduced since 1997, the poorest third of pensioners are, on average, £1,750 a year, which is more than £33 a week, better off than they were in 1997. The disproportionate increase for the poorest is because of targeting. Does the hon. Gentleman think it wrong that we are giving more money to the poorest third?
	As I said recently at oral questions, I do not think that any of us, as MPs, would want to go up to elderly people in our constituency who have benefited from pension credit and tell them they are victims of some terrible means-testing. Indeed, an application for pension credit is usually made over the telephone and the form is filled in by an expert, rather than by the elderly person. There is a whole new approach to the notion of income-testing.

David Winnick: As regards targeting, or means-testing, is it not a fact that before we came to office, and before there was any winter fuel allowance, the only help that pensioners got was the cold weather payments, and it had to be freezing for seven consecutive days, no less, before the allowance was paid, and they had to be on income support to receive even the miserly £7 or £8 a week? Compare that with what we have done in office.

Malcolm Wicks: There is a further comparison to be made between the former Administration and our Administration in respect of VAT on fuel. On a theme that is dear to my hon. Friend's heart and mine, as he knows, the energy efficiency programmes are also important.
	Through pension credit the Government are for the first time rewarding those who have saved and who so often just missed out in the past under the old minimum income guarantee system. Despite the constant knocking by those on the Opposition Benches, pension credit is working well. It is already helping 2.4 million pensioner households—nearly 3 million individuals—across our country. And we must not forget that it is this Government who introduced the winter fuel payment and increased those payments from £20 in 1997 to £200 today, with an extra £100 for those over 80. Also, it is this Government who give free TV licences to the over-75s.
	We will be spending about £10 billion extra on pensioners this year as a result of the measures introduced since 1997—£10 billion. This includes about £5 billion that is being spent on the poorest third of pensioners—targeting, again, the very people who need help the most. That is almost £6 billion more than if the basic state pension had been linked to earnings since 1998 and nothing else had happened.
	Around 80 per cent. of recently retired women pensioners do not have a full state pension because of broken national insurance records—something often forgotten by those on various sides who are campaigning to restore the earnings link. We are supporting women particularly through pension credit. More than half—54 per cent.—of those eligible are single women, and two thirds of those who benefit overall from the new credit are women.
	The measure before the House today will benefit a large number of elderly people. About 5 million households will receive the payment at a cost of around £500 million. We are again able to give extra help to our eldest pensioners. The Bill represents yet another step in our mission to tackle poverty in old age. Alongside many other measures, it recognises the contribution that our elders have made to our country.

Nigel Waterson: We had a relatively short speech from the Minister commending the virtues of the Bill and it is a relatively short Bill, but one that says much about where the Government find themselves at this point in the electoral cycle. Make no mistake: the Bill is a panic measure in the face of the Government's failure on local government finance and in the face of campaigning by people like 83-year-old Devon pensioner, Elizabeth Winkfield, who memorably said that she would rather go to prison than pay her increased council tax.
	The Bill is a straightforward electoral bribe. Furthermore, it is based on a misapprehension about the way the payment could be paid. It dawned on the Government only late in the day that they needed primary legislation to put through the payment. I will hear in correspondence, apparently, when the Minister became aware that that would be necessary. I cannot help feeling that it was one of those days when civil servants brought unpalatable news to the Minister and that he might have remembered it. I suspect that there might have been the odd expletive, but we will find out in due course.

Malcolm Wicks: The hon. Gentleman meant that as a joke, but I do not use expletives and I talk to my officials as sensibly as I am sure he would.

Nigel Waterson: I am happy to accept that, bloodless and restrained as ever, the Minister does not use expletives. Perhaps he contented himself with saying, "Oh dear."

Henry Bellingham: Does my hon. Friend agree that there probably were expletives among the Government party managers? They must have been furious that the Treasury had made a mistake. The Chancellor introduced his Budget and made a great announcement, then all of a sudden we are dealing with primary legislation. Surely that shows staggering incompetence on the part of the Government.

Nigel Waterson: My hon. Friend is right. There was certainly some incompetence, but it is obvious that the Bill is a panic measure. We do not yet know, because the Minister is being so reticent, when he heard for the first time about the £100 payment. [Interruption.] As my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) says from a sedentary position, I have a shrewd suspicion that the Minister learned about it at the same time as everybody else, during the Budget statement. Most of all, the Bill is a panic measure that seeks to tackle, in a clumsy way that I shall describe in more detail, a problem created by the Government.
	Before I remind the House of the Government's record on local government finance in detail, may I say how disappointed I am that someone with the Minister's academic credentials should still be trotting out the old canard about how to compare like with like in respect of council tax? We have all heard the arguments before but, for the sake of repetition, I remind hon. Members that the House of Commons Library, no less, says:
	"to compare year-on-year increases council taxes are expressed in terms of the average Band D council tax for a 2-adult dwelling."
	In The Sunday Times, Mr. Peter Kellner memorably wrote:
	"Homes in Labour areas tended to fall into lower council tax bands and this was why average council tax was lower. . . The proper way to judge the figures was to compare like with like—say, Band D figures, council by council".
	He went on to state that Labour's claim
	"is as misleading as it ever was . . . On this issue, Labour is wrong and Tories are right".

Christopher Chope: Does my hon. Friend accept that Labour areas often get a lot more grant from a Labour Government than Conservative councils? For example, Sedgefield council gets eight times more grant than East Dorset district council.

Nigel Waterson: My hon. Friend is right. One of the great unfairnesses faced by those of us who represent constituencies in the south, and particularly in the south-east, is the decision, which was clearly political, to switch resources from our areas to the north and other parts of the country.

Chris Pond: Did the hon. Gentleman examine the figures before asserting that Labour councils get larger grants than Conservative councils and that more funds go to councils in the north than those in the south? Is he aware that the 5.9 per cent. average grant increase for Labour councils was slightly lower than the 6.1 per cent. increase for Tory councils? Councils in the three northern regions received slightly lower grant increases than those in the south-east and London. Is he aware of the facts, or is he trotting out the mantra?

Nigel Waterson: The Under-Secretary speaks for the Government, but perhaps he should speak for Kent.

Paul Beresford: My hon. Friend will know that, although the Under-Secretary's point was helpful, he was discussing this year's increase on last year's deficit. Having taken away £30 million year on year from Somerset and £39 million year on year from Surrey, the Government gave those areas a tiny little increase compared with that for the north in the previous year.

Nigel Waterson: My hon. Friend speaks with his usual authority on such matters, and some of my hon. Friends and I recently met a Minister from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to raise that unfairness. Without wishing to bore the House with details from East Sussex, the Government recognise that the first attempt to give grants from central Government resulted in inequities, so they came up with a second tranche of funding. The only problem is that the entire population of East Sussex received the princely sum of £5,000 as a result of that exercise, which piled incompetence on top of incompetence.
	The figures are clear: since the Government came to power, council tax bills for the average band D home have increased by 70 per cent. A typical household now pays almost £500 extra a year under this Government. One third of the increase in the basic state pension for the typical pensioner has been taken up by higher council tax, which is a point that relates to this Bill.
	In his introduction, the Minister rightly touched on council tax benefit, which, as we all know, is traditionally the means-tested benefit with the lowest take-up. Government figures produced in February show that the position is getting worse, because the take-up of council tax benefit is between 66 and 72 per cent. by case load. Older pensioners are less likely to claim the benefit, which makes the situation worse, and take-up is a particular problem with older pensioners who are owner-occupiers. Low take-up affects the poorest pensioners most severely.
	We welcomed the attempts led by the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond) to boost take-up. Although they were welcome, they did not alter the fact that the figures are getting worse, not better. Perhaps the storm of protest, particularly among pensioners in the south of England, was not surprising. I have already referred to 83-year-old Elizabeth Winkfield from Devon, who refused to pay the full 17.9 per cent. increase in her council tax bill—she said that she would rather go to jail than pay more than an inflation-based increase.
	It was no surprise, except possibly to the Minister, when the Chancellor set out his understanding of the difficulties faced by older pensioners on fixed incomes. He said:
	"The evidence shows that their council tax bills take a higher share of their income than the rest of the population."—[Official Report, 17 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 336.]
	Welcome to the real world. The Government clearly took a political decision to make the £100 payment, which is a nice round figure, although it is difficult to see where it came from. It bears no relation to the different levels of council tax up and down the country or individual pensioners' means, because it was plucked out of the air. All the evidence points to a panic measure included in the Budget at the last minute, possibly without the knowledge of DWP Ministers and certainly without the knowledge of DWP officials.
	When the Budget statement was drafted, the assumption that clearly underlay the decision to make the payment was that the money could simply and easily be added to the winter fuel payments by an amendment to the Social Fund Winter Fuel Payments Regulations 2000. As the Minister says, the problem was that the Government's legal advice stated that that was not possible and that the Government must introduce primary legislation. When the Chancellor made his statement, issued the accompanying press notices and released the Red Book, no one had properly addressed how those payments were to be coupled with the winter fuel payments and the precise mechanism had yet to be examined—a panic measure, if ever there was one.
	In a written answer, the Minister stated:
	"We are looking at the most cost-effective and efficient way to deliver payments. It is intended that a single one-off payment is made in 2004–05."—[Official Report, 31 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 1490.]
	That leaves a question mark, Mr. Speaker, and I am sure that it has occurred to you, as well as to me. The Minister used the phrase "one-off" again in his speech this afternoon, but the Bill seeks powers to make payments to the over-60s, as opposed to the over-70s, on various terms.
	I must press the Minister further and I shall return to the question whether the payment is a one-off or whether the Government simply intend to make similar payments year on year. It is a harsh fact of political life that once one gives a payment for cold weather or TV licences, for example, pensioners, not unreasonably, become attached to it, and it becomes politically difficult to take it away. [Interruption.]
	Perhaps I can quell the hilarity on the Government Benches by examining the reaction of pensioners and pensioners' organisations to the Bill and to the £100 payment. The under-70s are not terribly impressed. Why should a 69-year-old not receive the payment? What is the logic behind that? As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) says, if the husband in a retired couple sadly passes away before the qualifying date and the widow is slightly under 70, why should she not get the payment?
	On the face of it, the measure involves an element of discrimination. We know that the Government are wedded to dealing with discrimination: they signed up to the European convention on human rights, article 14 of which makes it clear that discrimination should not occur on a range of different grounds. However, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions feels able to make a standard statement on the Bill that, in his view, the provisions are compatible with convention rights.
	For once, the explanatory notes to the Bill are interesting:
	"The setting of age 70 for entitlement is justified on the grounds that members of this age group are less likely to be in work, have less money and have fixed incomes."
	There is, of course, some truth to that statement, but one could say the same about the over-65s or even the over-60s—many more people now take early retirement. It is not clear why only the over-70s should be included.

Christopher Chope: Does my hon. Friend agree that another cause for concern among younger pensioner households is that the Government have deprived them of their married couples allowance, which is still payable to older married couples?

Nigel Waterson: My hon. Friend is right. That is yet another peculiarity about the odd division between the over-70s and the under-70s.
	Another issue, which certainly puzzles pensioners in my constituency, is that the payment is wholly unrelated to council tax rises in different areas. A third puzzle is that it bears no relation at all to tax or benefits, as it is completely independent of the tax and benefits systems. The ultimate example of that—the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—is that a pensioner who is on full council tax benefit will still get the £100.
	Perhaps the issue that has caused most controversy among pensioners and their organisations is the eight-month delay in receiving the money. Again, that may be a function of the panic in which the promise was put in the Budget, but the reality is that pensioners will have received their council tax demands eight months earlier than the payment that was made at Christmas, at the same time as the winter fuel payment. Will the Minister explain why, if it is not possible without primary legislation to link the payment to the winter fuel payment, it still has to be done at the same time and with the same qualifying week? There may be a good, practical reason for that, but if the Government hope to garner some electoral benefit from the payment, would it not have made more sense for it to drop on to people's doormats at about the time that they are wondering whom to vote for on 10 June?
	Another interesting feature of the announcement was the chorus of disapproval from pensioners' organisations. Mr. Neil Duncan-Jordan, a spokesman for the National Pensioners Convention—the Minister and I are to have the pleasure of addressing its parliament next week, so I hope that he remembers to put the telephone directory down his trousers beforehand—said:
	"It is completely wrong to make an announcement like this and not have the details in place. It leads us to believe that the Chancellor's statement was made simply to gain publicity."
	Heaven forfend. I am sure that such thoughts never cross the mind of this Government and these Ministers. He went on: "One-off payments"—to use the Minister's phrase—
	"such as this are not the answer to pensioner hardship. They are often seen by the public as just cynical attempts to grab votes."
	Is not that the likely reaction of the average pensioner?
	Mr. Mervyn Kohler of Help the Aged said:
	"there would be no need for gifts like this if the Government was to review its fixation with means-testing"—
	a point that was made by my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham). Mr. Kohler continued:
	"For many older people, this means months of going without in order to pay this year's bill."
	Mr. Rodney Bickerstaffe, who is not yet a member of the Conservative party, but is president of the National Pensioners Convention, said:
	"The best way to tackle the problem is through a bigger basic state pension . . . the Chancellor's announcement . . . fails to offer a long-term solution to the problems faced, by those under 70, of rising bills and falling incomes . . . with the Chancellor's decision not to restore the link with earnings in favour of expanding the Pension Credit, millions of existing and future pensioners will continue to rely on means-tested benefits."
	Frankly, I could not have put it better.

Malcolm Wicks: Given that the Opposition declined to give a Second Reading to the Pensions Bill, which will establish the very important pension protection fund, is it not time for the hon. Gentleman to say whether he will support this Bill?

Nigel Waterson: That is the traditional purpose of making a speech on Second Reading. If the Minister can contain his enthusiasm, I shall of course come to that.
	Gordon Lishman, director general of Age Concern, said:
	"it's a disgrace that the state pension is so inadequate people have to rely on one-off payments to cover daily living costs."
	Lest it be said that I am being unfair in focusing entirely on the Government and the Minister, whom I know to be well intentioned, let me turn for a moment to the Liberal Democrats, who have turned hypocrisy into an art form or an Olympic event. Up and down the country, including in my constituency, they are running a campaign to abolish the council tax. That is rather like the serial killer who leaves a note at the home of his last victim saying, "Please stop me before I do it again." My own council, Eastbourne, is a good example: it has increased council tax by 45 per cent. over the past two years. With the Liberal Democrats running the show at the town hall, no one could devise a system of local government finance that did not involve extremely high payments being made, often by the poorest in society. The highest rise anywhere this year—28 per cent.—was imposed by Shepway council. There are no prizes for guessing who runs Shepway—it is of course the Liberal Democrats.

Chris Pond: Can the hon. Gentleman remind the House of the name of the MP for the constituency that covers Shepway?

John Bercow: I am sure that my hon. Friend has anticipated that point, which is somewhat irrelevant.

Nigel Waterson: I welcome my hon. Friend to our deliberations—he brings a new lustre to this parliamentary occasion.
	The Under-Secretary presses me to say that the local MP is my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the Leader of the official Opposition. It might also interest the Under-Secretary to know that the other day there was a council by-election in Shepway in which a formerly Liberal Democrat ward was won by the Conservatives with a swing of 31 per cent. [Interruption.] From a sedentary position, appropriately, the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) says that it was all about toilets. Indeed it was—the Liberal Democrat council wanted to shut every single public lavatory in the entire area.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Hon. Members may find this fascinating, but I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would return to the subject before the House.

Nigel Waterson: Certainly, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	My main point is that the Liberal Democrats often present their idea of a local income tax as a simpler and fairer alternative to council tax, but it is neither of those things.

Steve Webb: We can anticipate what is coming, because we have heard it all before, but what is the hon. Gentleman's solution to the unfairness of the council tax?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I would appreciate it if hon. Members did not go too far down that road.

Nigel Waterson: One solution is not to elect Liberal Democrat councils.
	The problem with the idea of a local income tax is that it does not address the real causes of the crisis in local government finance for which the Bill is designed to be a fig leaf: first, the fiddled funding from Whitehall and, secondly, spendthrift Liberal Democrat and Labour councils.

Malcolm Wicks: Bring back the poll tax.

Nigel Waterson: The Liberal Democrats' local income tax would involve a tax, on adjusted figures, of 3.8 per cent. on all income between £4,745 and £100,000 a year. That would produce a basic rate of income tax of almost 26 per cent. and a higher rate of almost 44 per cent. The reality is that, at that 3.8 per cent. level, an average couple in England would end up paying an extra £630 a year—an increase of 65 per cent. Furthermore, such a tax would lead to large discrepancies in income taxation between different parts of the country, be a major burden on employers and distort the jobs market. I am sure that the Liberal Democrats are carefully examining those issues, but the central flaw, as they have said themselves, is that, as with any system of local government finance, there remains the issue of equalisation—how to deal with the differences between poorer and richer areas—and the related problems of gearing.

Andrew Bennett: In some places, there are considerable seasonal employment fluctuations while others can suddenly suffer large numbers of redundancies. Equalisation has to happen not just annually, but as the year progresses.

Nigel Waterson: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. That is only one of many practical problems that should be tackled but does not appear to have been considered by those who support a local income tax.

John Gummer: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Liberal Democrats support such a policy because, in the areas that will get money, they will tell people that money is coming and in areas where they might expect to do better out of local income tax, they will not mention equalisation? Liberal Democrats always say different things in different places. In my constituency, they recently blamed the Conservative winner of a local council election because he was too young and campaigned on the maturity of their candidate. In a nearby constituency, they said how wonderful it was to have a young candidate. Whatever the case, they will always present it.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to have to repeat myself but the Bill does not deal with such matters. I should be grateful if the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) dealt specifically with the measure's contents.

Nigel Waterson: I shall certainly do that and try to avoid too much party political discussion. In a sense, the Bill is more about council tax and local government finance than pensioners.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. It is true that the measure deals with how money is found for that purpose but not the detailed ramifications of the various aspects of the way in which council tax or other methods of payment are arrived at.

Nigel Waterson: I thank you for that guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If I may answer my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) briefly before moving on, he is right about the detail. The briefing note that sadly fell into the wrong hands when the Liberal Democrats launched local income tax stated:
	"We might get asked about the rate of local income tax we expect we would levy. We don't want to be drawn extensively into this."
	How wise.
	Clearly, a system that was different from the council tax and based on local income tax would have winners and losers, especially pensioners, who would pay more under the Bill if they had savings, worked hard and had a decent income. Many pensioners would pay more. It is easy to propose glib alternatives. In the Brent, East by-election, we were promised a £100 refund on council tax but that pledge appears to have been abandoned. In The Guardian, the leader of the Liberal Democrats
	"insisted that he had not broken his promise, although he admitted the pledge would not now be met."
	I am not sure what that means.
	Let me press the Minister on some specific questions. Are we considering a one-off payment or not? He appeared to make it clear in his opening speech that it was a one-off payment to pensioners who are over 70. Yet clause 7 grants the power to make regulations
	"providing for the making of payments . . . to persons who have attained the age of 60 years."
	It is not unreasonable to press Ministers about the circumstances in which they envisage using those powers. Will the payment depend on opinion polls? Will it be made only to people in marginal seats? Will it apply to swing voters? Perhaps it will be made only to women. There would be much sense in making the payments to older women because the latest findings show that that group in the electorate is going off the Government faster than any other. We need to be told why clause 7 is included in the measure when the payment is described as a one-off.
	In correspondence with my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), the Minister made it clear that the payment is only for 2004–05. My hon. Friend and I accept that at face value. However, that makes the presence of clause 7 even more puzzling. It seems clear that Ministers intend to use it in future and it is important to know the circumstances in which that might happen.

John Bercow: Does my hon. Friend agree that, if the Government are clear in their mind about their use of clause 7 and, moreover, believe that there is no ground for ambiguity on the matter, it would help to have a draft copy of the regulations before the Bill proceeds any further?

Nigel Waterson: My hon. Friend makes a telling point, as one would expect. However, after spending seven weeks serving on the Committee that considered the Pensions Bill, in which many important aspects are left to regulation, and not catching even a glimpse of a draft regulation, I do not hold out much hope.

Andrew Bennett: In the unlikely event of a future Conservative Government, would they make such payments?

Nigel Waterson: With respect, it is not right to ask me to make such a commitment. I am trying to ask the current Government about their intentions, which appear very murky.
	I want to ask about the qualifying date. According to my reading of the measure, a person in the household would have to be over 70 on the qualifying date in September to qualify. Why not make that a little more flexible? My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) mentioned the problem of a 70-year-old in the household who dies in the relevant period. Could not we provide that someone had to be 70 on the qualifying date in September, when the amount was to be paid in December or at sometime in the council tax year? That would be simpler and might be fairer.
	Why in only this instance do the Government accept the logic of giving help to all pensioners in the same way? On more important matters, they pin their hopes on ever more means-testing. Are they perhaps beginning to appreciate the wisdom of the Conservative policy of restoring the link with average earnings?
	I have now reached the part of my speech that the Minister was so keen to hear. Of course, the official Opposition will not stand in the way of older pensioners receiving their £100. Good for them. If there is a vote on the Bill, I shall invite my hon. Friends to support it. However, it is a blatant piece of electioneering. Worse, it has signally failed. It has been revealed to be a panic measure. Its implementation will be bungled because the money will arrive far too late for pensioners in genuine need. Pensioners and pensioners' organisations have seen through the whole exercise. In short, the Government will end up spending up to £500 million with not a single vote to show for it.

Steve Webb: One almost feels that the Bill need not detain the House at all. We all know what it is about. As the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) concluded, it provides for a one-off payment of £100 because the Government are panicking about the council tax; there is an election approaching, and there was nothing in the Budget for subsequent years. None of us would begrudge older pensioners £100 because we all acknowledge that many of them need the money, so why do not we accept that and go home? I rather feel, however, that having been given the Floor, I cannot quite leave it at that—tempted though I am.
	The proposed payment clearly has nothing to do with council tax, because it will be paid to people who do not pay council tax, such as those living in households with members under pension age. It will also be paid to people who are already getting a full rebate. So it has nothing to do with council tax, just as the winter fuel payment has nothing to do with winter fuel—it has something to do with the winter, because that is when it is paid, but nothing to do with fuel.
	The reason that the winter fuel payment has "fuel" in its title is that that allows the Government to pay it through the social fund, which meant that its introduction did not require primary legislation. If they could have called this payment a "council tax and fuel payment", they would not have needed primary legislation to introduce it, because as long as it has something to do with fuel, they can deliver it through the social fund. I am not sure whether millions of pensioners realise that they are getting social fund payments at the moment, but I shall draw a veil over that. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Jones) has pointed out to me that some of the council tax money paid by pensioners is used to heat council buildings, so perhaps the Government could have used that loophole to bring this payment within the social fund.
	This is a bizarre situation. Under the Bill, £500 million—give or take—has been tossed away in the last minutes of a Budget speech. One of the strange things about the Bill is this business about the ability to pay other payments of this kind at any point in the future, as set out in clause 7. I asked a question about the circumstances in which the Government might want to do that, and I received a reply on 30 April, in which the Minister for Pensions referred to the affirmative procedure. So we will get a vote on the proposal to spend £500 million, or whatever, which will be wonderful, but we shall be voting on something unamendable.
	The Bill therefore paves the way for proposals for payments—if they were to go to all pensioners, they could easily add up to billions of pounds—to go through after two 90-minute debates. Moreover, the Government will have some influence, shall we say, on the membership of the said Committee through the usual channels. Huge sums of taxpayers' money could therefore be spent with no opportunity to amend the proposals in any respect. That seems an extraordinary power to give to the Government through the Bill. At least we shall have some semblance of a debate today, and we shall have at least a day in Committee, which will give us some chance to look at how that £500 million is to be spent. But the fact that the Bill gives the Government the power to sling a few hundred million more in the direction of pensioners whenever they feel like it seems very odd and rather unacceptable.

Andrew Bennett: How does this proposal differ from the uprating orders that we have each year?

Steve Webb: The uprating orders have traditionally been debated on the Floor of the House, often taking a whole day of parliamentary time rather than 90 minutes in an upstairs Committee Room. Indeed, on the occasions when we have felt that an uprating order was unacceptable—for example, the one that related to the 75p pension rise that the Government do not mention very often—we have voted it down, in an attempt to make the Government bring in a better one. A far better way of scrutinising these matters would be to present them in an amendable form, and for the Government to be required to come to the House with something that could be scrutinised not only in principle but in detail. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman thinks that a commitment to spend £500 million next time round, given without virtually any examination, is an acceptable example of the way in which the House scrutinises the Government, but I certainly do not.

Michael Weir: Is not another difference between this proposal and the uprating orders the fact that the orders deal with existing benefits? We know what those benefits are, whereas clause 7 of the Bill could conceivably be used to introduce any sort of payment.

Steve Webb: I was about to make that excellent point. The hon. Gentleman is quite right. Every year, we use the uprating orders to roll on an existing system that we understand well, but the Bill is about something completely new. It will introduce a new set of rules, which is why it requires even more proper scrutiny than the annual uprating process.
	If we are concerned—as we are—about the burden of council tax on people on low or modest fixed incomes, we must ask ourselves whether this Bill presents the right strategy to deal with that issue. There are better ways to approach the problem, namely, to provide people with a decent pension. It seems undignified for pensioners to have to hang on every word of the Chancellor's speech, having remembered to switch it on five minutes before the end, which is when they get given the cash—the goodies that the Chancellor had to spare because an election was coming up. Is not that an undignified way to treat pensioners? Should they not know at the start of each financial year what money they will have coming in, and should not that money be adequate to meet bills of this sort so that they do not need such one-off special payments? I have similar feelings about other ad hoc payments that the Government have introduced.

Patrick McLoughlin: The hon. Gentleman has just accused the Government of offering an election bribe, which this proposal clearly is. If my memory is correct, in the last by-election that the Liberal Democrats fought, they put a "cheque" for £100 on the bottom of their leaflets, offering voters that amount off their council tax. They have now abolished that proposal. Was that not an election bribe that they subsequently decided was a bad idea?

Steve Webb: We are proposing to abolish the council tax. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the leader of the party has over-performed, as he does so often, by proposing not only to cut £100 from people's council tax but to abolish the whole thing. If I am accused of breaking a promise to the electors to cut £100 of their council tax, when we are replacing that with a policy to scrap £1,000 of their council tax, I stand condemned.

David Wilshire: Can we be absolutely clear about this? Is the hon. Gentleman pledging that his party, should we have the misfortune to see it form a Government, would scrap the council tax and replace it with a local income tax? If he will give us that pledge, my constituents would then understand why the average male in my constituency would end up with a bill of £700 a year more than he pays at the moment. They would be delighted to hear confirmation of that.

Steve Webb: The hon. Gentleman should not believe his central office briefings. He should know that by now. In answer to the first part of his intervention: yes, our pledge is unequivocally and absolutely to replace the unfair council tax with a fair local income tax of the kind used in many European countries, which will not reassure the hon. Gentleman. Such taxes are also used in many American states, however, which perhaps will reassure him.
	In answer to the second part of the hon. Gentleman's question, the local income tax will replace the council tax, but we envisage one tax rise, on those earning more than £100,000 a year. Part of the proceeds of that tax rise—£1.7 billion, to be precise—will be used to ease the burden of the transition from council tax to local income tax. The amount raised under our local income tax will actually be less than that raised under the council tax. Given that it will raise less money, the notion that the average family could be hundreds of pounds worse off does not make sense. The average outcome must be a gain, because we shall be raising less money overall. In fact, because the tax will be charged according to the ability to pay, the vast majority of pensioners, for example, will benefit from our proposal.
	That is precisely the focus of the Bill. That is what it is trying to do, in a very inadequate way. We believe, however, that a system in which pensioners who do not pay national income tax would not pay council tax either would be fairer than giving everyone £100 across the board, as that will fail to discriminate between those who pay no council tax and those who are well able to afford to do so.

David Wilshire: I am sure that I heard the hon. Gentleman say that his plans included some extra tax to ease the transition, so he is not actually denying that my constituents will face another £700 a year in tax. What he is saying is that he has a wheeze to put that off for a little while in the hope that people will forget about it, vote for his party, and subsequently pay the extra £700. Is that what the hon. Gentleman is saying?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I appreciate that the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) is now being seduced off the straight and narrow, but I would be grateful if he would avoid being seduced.

Steve Webb: I shall not find that too difficult in the present context, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As the hon. Gentleman's question has been placed on record, I shall simply say that a tax that raises less money—namely the replacement local income tax—could not possibly create an average loss, let alone one on the scale that he envisages. In fact, there will be average gains under our proposals.

Andrew Bennett: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Steve Webb: Yes, although I recognise your strictures, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Andrew Bennett: If the hon. Gentleman's proposals would bring in less money, does that mean that councils would have to cut services, particularly services to the elderly? Or would income tax have to go up to meet the shortfall?

Steve Webb: For the benefit of the record, if the hon. Gentleman had been listening a few moments ago, he would have heard me point out that, of the £5 billion or so that our proposal for a 50p income tax rate will raise, £1.7 billion will go towards easing the transition between council tax and local income tax. That would mean that councils would get the same amount of money. I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman, as a socialist—if I dare use that term—would favour higher taxation for those earning more than £100,000 a year.

Nigel Jones: To keep strictly in order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, may I say that I welcome the £100 proposal? Will my hon. Friend confirm, however, that under the local income tax, 74 per cent. of my constituents in Cheltenham would be better off?

Steve Webb: I am sure that my hon. Friend has read a more reliable briefing on that subject than the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire), and I am sure that he is correct.
	The focus of our debate is pensioners. The Bill is about doing something because the council tax hits pensioners, but the proposal to pay everyone a uniform amount, when some pay no council tax at all and others can afford to pay it, is very poorly targeted.
	Far better than an unfair tax system and a rebates system designed to try to redress that—and because that does not work, another lump sum payment—would be a fair local tax system in the first place. That must be the key. The problem at the moment is, first, that we have an unfair and rapidly increasing local tax bill, and secondly, a hopelessly ineffective rebates system—if it worked, pensioners would not feel the pain of the council tax. Because 1 million or more pensioners are missing out on the rebates and are paying the full council tax, the Government's policy has had political consequences. A sticking plaster of £100 to remedy the fact that the rebates fail to address an unfair council tax system is a crazy solution. The House should be aware that the bureaucracy to run a rebates system, which is one way of trying to make council tax fairer, and to levy council tax, costs £600 million. That money should be going on pensions and pensioners. That is another reason why there are better strategies to adopt than that in the Bill.
	The alternative strategy, as well as making the local tax system fairer, offers a better system of support for pensioners. Clearly, one of the reasons why many pensioners over 70, who are the subject of the Bill, are so poor is that they do not get the means-tested benefits to which they are entitled. The Government's view is that with one more heave, another publicity campaign and another leaflet, all will be well with the world. The Minister knows, however, that for years to come a structural feature of the Government's mass means-testing strategy is that vast numbers of older people will simply not get the money to which they are entitled. The Government will then recognise that as a political problem, and will have to find a system that people do take up. I accept that winter fuel payments are generally taken up, with men aged between 60 and 64 as the main exception. The Government must use a system that they know works to get money to people, because the other systems, such as mass means-testing, do not work. The Government have an unfair local tax system and a rebates system that does not work, so they have had to patch it up. On top of that, they provide an inadequate pension and conduct means-testing to deal with that inadequacy, and because that does not work, they need another sticking plaster.

Malcolm Wicks: I am following the hon. Gentleman's argument, but does he accept that one of the problems with putting all the money into the national insurance pension is that many vulnerable people, particularly elderly women, do not have full national insurance contributions records, and would not therefore benefit? How does his critique of the £100 payment for the over-70s—I am not sure whether he is criticising winter fuel payments—relate to his party's policy of age-relating the basic pension in favour of the older elderly?

Steve Webb: The Minister makes two good and perfectly fair points. That is why we believe that when we try to improve the pension, we should do it on a citizenship basis. It may not be feasible to do that for all pensioners in one go, but the starting point needs to be that a citizen, particularly an older citizen, qualifies for a pension, and recognition of the fact that because many older people have inadequate contribution records because of caring responsibilities and because, as women, they have spent a lot of time out of the labour market, they have suffered. For as long as the Government insist on using the contributory basis to go forward with pensions policy, the groups that he has highlighted will continue to suffer. That is why our citizenship proposal will benefit older pensioners and women in particular. He is right to highlight that group. I am grateful for that, and I am glad about his concern for that group. We will address that group's problems with our policies, and it is time that the Government did so too.
	On the issue of how best to support our pensioners, clearly, the hon. Gentleman has mentioned restoring the earnings link, which we will discuss at greater length next week on the Pensions Bill. If we are concerned about the effect of council tax on pensioners, increasing a woefully inadequate pension by a few percentage points above inflation is not the way to do it. In part, that is precisely because of the reasons that he gave—many poorer pensioners do not get full pension, so they will get less from the restoration of the earnings link—but it is also because the pension is so inadequate.
	To raise a few issues to which we might return in Committee, I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the eligible date for this payment. When dealing with winter fuel payments, some of the recipients are not yet state pensioners, so there might be an argument that more time is needed to include them in the system, although I have some doubts about even that. A more credible argument is that given that we are not paying pensions to some of those people, but they are 60, they qualify for winter fuel payments, and because those people must be identified, a time lag is needed between the day on which they qualify and the day on which we pay the money, although I think that that argument is overdone.
	That argument does not apply to the over-70s, however, as they are all in the system already, and I presume that practically all of them will already be getting winter fuel payments. Therefore, why do we need a qualifying date in the third week in September to pay them the money by Christmas? To coin a phrase, we know where they live and who they are. Given our desire to support older pensioners, why do we have to say that someone who is 70 in October cannot have a payment to help them with their council tax in December— when they will be 70 and two months—because they were not 70 in September. Given that they are already in the system, and the Department knows their date of birth—even its crumbling computers will know that, as it will be paying their winter fuel payments—there seems no reason for that early entitlement date. Changing it would not cost the Government huge sums of money. A set of pensioners will feel aggrieved that they do not qualify for the payment, even though they are 70 in December, because they were not that qualifying age three months earlier in September, even though the Department knew all about them—[Interruption.] I am happy to give way if the Minister wants to challenge that.

Chris Pond: I am rather puzzled, because wherever one sets the point of qualification, some people will be on the wrong side of the line. I am afraid that that is inevitable.

Steve Webb: With respect, that is not the point. My point is that there is a three-month gap between the date on which someone becomes eligible and the date on which they get the money. Why must it be three months? Because those people are already in the system, November could be the eligible date, for example, which would allow more people who are 70 at the time of payment to get the money, which is surely what we want.

Nigel Waterson: I am following the hon. Gentleman's point, not least because it mirrors to an extent one that I made. Can he see—because I cannot—any practical objection to making the payment to anyone who becomes 70, or is 70, during that council tax year?

Steve Webb: I see where the hon. Gentleman is coming from. I guess that his suggestion is that perhaps it should be a 70th birthday present of some sort, so that it might be paid at different points throughout the year. I can see the administrative attraction of making all the payments in one week, give or take a little, and of drawing attention to all the publicity at a particular point rather than steadily through the year. There are attractions in bunching the payments. That said, I cannot see why three months are required to work out who is 70.

Christopher Chope: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) does not address the issue of someone who is 70 now, and who is part of a household in which no one else is over 70, and who dies in August but has already had to pay the council tax bill for this year?

Steve Webb: That is a fair point. The honest truth is that we all know that this is nothing to do with the council tax. For as long as the Government want to maintain the fiction that it is, however, the hon. Gentleman has a perfectly fair point. One would sympathise hugely with a household that has already started to pay council tax at the high levels that people must pay, but has never got help because sadly it suffered a bereavement during the year.

Andrew Bennett: There is a slight flaw in that argument. It is very sad that someone dies, but at the point at which they die, the household will almost certainly get the single person rebate on the council tax.

Steve Webb: For several months while that person is still alive, however, the household will pay the full council tax at the higher rate that people must pay, yet it will not get anything towards the bill for that period—the discount will only apply for the remainder of the year.
	I always want to save the Government money if I can. In relation to winter fuel payments, I recall that the Government were taken to court—and they lost, if I remember rightly—by British citizens living elsewhere in the EU. I do not know if the Minister has a view on this, and he may want to deal with it in his winding-up speech. As I recall, at first, winter fuel payments were meant to be paid only to UK citizens living in Great Britain. A court case was then held, and I think that I am right that winter fuel payments can now be paid to British citizens living elsewhere in the EU. What I am not clear about is whether this Bill, which tries to restrict payments to people who are resident in Great Britain during the qualifying week, will be subject to the same legal challenge, because winter fuel payments now have to be paid across the EU. I am not clear as to why these payments will only be paid to Great Britain residents. Clearly, the argument will be that people elsewhere in the EU do not pay the council tax, but the Bill does not mention the council tax, because it is nothing to do with it. I merely wish to save the Government the trouble of a legal challenge.
	As I said at the outset, we know what the Bill is all about. We will not stand in its way, as none of us begrudge £100 for elderly pensioners who certainly need the money. The key point, however, is that once again the Government are producing a sticking plaster to deal with problems elsewhere in the system. We have an unfair local tax system that is not being dealt with satisfactorily through an ineffective rebate system, so we need a sticking plaster. We have an inadequate basic pension which is not being dealt with satisfactorily through an ineffective means-testing system, so we need another sticking plaster. One day, I hope—and I hope that day comes soon—we will have a Government who introduce fair local tax and decent pensions, and we will not need Bills like this.

Paul Beresford: Before you took the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Minister carefully explained—notwithstanding what the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) said—that the Bill was intended to help pensioners with their council tax. He went through the usual performance of explaining that council tax rises had been dramatic over the past couple of years—which they have been—and blaming local authorities. I believe that if the Government examined the real causes of the increases they would see that had they adopted a different approach earlier, we would not need the Bill and we would not need the money for pensioners. Indeed, that might be the case if they adopted a different approach even at this late stage. Pensioners in my area will of course welcome the money. Pensioners aged 70 and above, and those under 70, will be worried by the council tax rise that they face—courtesy, again, of the Government.
	About two years ago, ODPM Ministers explained that the council tax was reasonable. The huge outcry that prompted this panic reaction was generated at that time because people, especially in London and the south-east, were hurt by the tax. I believe that the Government are largely responsible for that. The Minister blamed local authorities, and I accept that some are to blame. Many Labour and Liberal councils' running costs are exorbitant compared with those of Conservative councils. The Liberals' idea of a different tax system should be taken with a pinch of salt: in Mole Valley the group led by the Conservatives and Independents raised the council tax by 5 per cent., but the Liberals wanted to raise it by 18 per cent. Nevertheless, I believe that central Government are the main cause of the increases.
	The English council general fund has increased by 72.5 per cent. over the past 10 years. It consists of councils' running costs, and is directly reflected in council tax. One of the main reasons for the increase, in my view, is the Labour Government's paranoia, and their wish to centralise and control. They have introduced best value comprehensive performance assessments, various inspections, including Audit Commission and school inspections, and complex social services procedures. In addition, they have produced target after target. If there is a difficulty with local authority performance in any area, the Government will come up with yet another target—and all that costs money. The cost of inspections, and reactions to inspections, is reflected in council tax—dramatically, because of the gearing effect—and in the position of our pensioners.
	The Government's last thought is for output and whether value for money has been obtained. By abolishing competitive tendering, they have hurt some councils that have tried to save council tax. Many hidden costs—best value and CPAs, for instance—can paralyse council staff for many weeks as they prepare for inspections, and in addition there is the process of the inspections themselves. All that is reflected in the additional cost to pensioners, whom the Bill is intended to help.
	The Select Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is conducting an inquiry into the costs, and there has been quite a reaction. Some councils' costs are fairly dramatic. A Havering councillor tells me that the Government have imposed extra planning requirements on the council, which cost another £150,000. Performance indicators add another £400,000 and external inspections a further £400,000. Best value reviews mean another £150,000; responding to Government consultations, another £100,000; Government returns, another £200,000; and bidding for grants, another £300,000. All that goes on to council tax, with gearing attached—at a time when the Government have reduced funding for London and the south-east dramatically year on year.
	Yesterday, Somerset county council told the Committee that it had lost £30 million year on year as a result of the change in the funding formula. Surrey had lost £39 million. Those losses, which came at very short notice, prevented the councils from responding with savings to cut costs for all pensioners—indeed, for all local people.

Andrew Bennett: Somerset did not lose £30 million. The money that it received was not cut. It did not receive extra money that it had hoped to receive.

Paul Beresford: That is a slightly slanted way of looking at it. Somerset says that if the existing funding formula had continued, it would have received the £30 million. In effect, it lost the money year on year. The hon. Gentleman—who chairs the Select Committee—nods. I am grateful for that.
	Council tax benefits provided part of the solution, but, as the Committee is finding out, take-up is pitiful. When we asked yesterday why that was so, we were told that the forms were too long, complicated and intrusive. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) pointed out, this is a panic reaction from the Government—their second panic reaction. The first manifested itself in capping and sudden handouts to selected local authorities.
	The Liberals, who never miss a bandwagon, have jumped on the bandwagon of local income tax. Treasury figures suggest that a married couple in my constituency on average earnings would pay an extra £886 a year if such a tax were imposed. They would not gain from any of the benefits proposed today.
	ODPM Ministers tell us that we have been helped by threats of capping. Some local authorities have, in fact, been capped. Although that is welcome and has generated the right response, it does not deal with councils' main problem—the exorbitant cost of the Government's intrusion on and management of their affairs, and the additional cost of gearing, which lands on the doorsteps of our pensioners and everyone else. Rather than presenting us with this Bill, the Government should do what they should have done long ago. They should get off local authorities' backs, and reduce the costs that have been generated by their interference.

Malcolm Wicks: I am sorry to interrupt to hon. Gentleman's flow, but I want to apologise to him. When he intervened on me earlier, I reminded the House that we had both been Croydon Members, and implied that he had been thrown out by the electorate. In fact, he was the innocent victim of a boundary change. He must now feel very satisfied about the fact that he did not become a candidate for the new Croydon constituency, which fell to a Labour swing. I wanted to place that correction on the record and apology to a former colleague in Croydon.

Paul Beresford: I thank the Minister for his apology. An interesting question, which will never be answered, is whether I would have been elected had I stayed in Croydon.
	Here we sit, looking at a little Bill that will give a few people in my constituency and across England £100. That pales into insignificance in comparison with the damage that the Government have done to local authorities and to council tax bills, multiplied by gearing. For most local authorities, an extra £1 in costs means another £4 on council tax. For some, particularly in London, it means another £11.
	It would have been practical for this paranoid Government to get off the back of local authorities and to go back to the approach of the Conservatives in 1992.

Hywel Williams: The Bill applies not only to England but to Wales and Scotland. Obviously, Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party welcome this modest payment to older people, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it does not go far.
	We note with interest that it is a flat-rate payment on the basis of age, using age as a proxy for poverty, as the Government have noted themselves. People over 80 will get a higher payment. There are hon. Members on both sides of the House who wish that the Government would apply that principle to the retirement pension. That would address some of the poverty that is prevalent in my constituency and throughout Wales among older pensioners.
	We note with approval the Minister's argument that the payment is transparent and that the administrative costs will be modest. Would that he and his colleagues applied the same argument to the growth in means-tested benefits, which are opaque, complicated and expensive to operate, as is council tax benefit. As has been said in the debate already, one of the reasons for the low take-up of council tax benefit is its complexity and opacity. This payment in some ways seems to be a sticking plaster—a recognition by the Government that council tax benefit is not working.
	I am pleased to say that some local authorities in Wales have had significantly lower council tax increases than others. The increase in my own local authority, Gwynedd county council, is well below the average. Caerffili and Rhondda Cynon Taf have also had low council tax increases. Happily, council tax payers in those Plaid Cymru-controlled areas will have more disposable income, but this is hardly fair to those council tax payers in Wales still groaning under the weight of council tax increases in Labour and independent-controlled councils.

Michael Weir: Does my hon. Friend recognise that the same is true in Scotland, where SNP-controlled councils such as my own in Angus have low council tax, despite the fact that the Liberal and Labour coalition in Edinburgh has distributed funds unfairly? The £100 will make little impact on the many people paying huge council taxes under Labour-controlled councils and indeed independent-controlled councils such as Moray, the council tax of which is increasing by almost 10 per cent. this year.

Hywel Williams: My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point—all the more so since there are no elections in Scotland and his comments are untainted by the considerations that have led the Government to bring in this electoral bribe. He is clearly a man principle.
	As far as I can see, there is no direct link between this payment and council tax rises. As has been said, pensioners over 70 will receive the full payment. Pensioners receiving council tax benefits will still qualify. Significantly, the payments will be made with the winter fuel payment. Therefore, it is highly likely that older people will not make a particular link with council tax. They are far more likely to see the payment as linked to their fuel bills. They may see it as being consolidated with the £200 that they already receive. In that respect, questions regarding the fuel payment are especially pertinent.
	I wish to highlight my concern that the new payment will be a single payment—one payment at one point. Many local authorities offer the facility of monthly payments of council tax, often by direct debit. I take advantage of those arrangements and find them extremely convenient. I do not see why older people should not be enabled to take advantage of that convenience and why the payment could not be staged in some way, although it may not be practical to have 10 payments. I presume that the Department for Work and Pensions' computer could facilitate that, although perhaps I am assuming too much in that respect.
	I was approached recently by a constituent, Mrs. Beryl Williams of Nefyn, who asked me a couple of questions that I could not answer, but the Government might like to suggest answers to them. She asked why the payment is for one year only—why it is a one-off—when older people's needs are likely to be the same over a number of years. Clause 7 will allow the Government to make other payments, but that is no reassurance to my constituent, who is trying to think ahead and to plan her income and expenditure. She needs some reassurance.
	Mrs. Williams also asked me why the Department for Work and Pensions will assess qualification for the payment on the basis of residence and age in one relevant week. She asked, and I could not answer her, why there could not be some move towards a rolling assessment, so that people could be paid closer to their birthday. Those sensible questions have occurred to her as a practical consequence of her experience as an older person trying to make ends meet. Those are questions that the Minister might address when he sums up. I am sure that he has a ready answer and I look forward to hearing it.

David Wilshire: May I start by seeking to help the Minister? His ministerial colleague has left, but he got very excited earlier when he was anxious to know whether Opposition Members were going to support the Bill. Let me clear that one up to save the Minister asking me in a moment or two. I make it clear that I welcome the principle behind the Bill, in that the principle, as I understand it, is that the Government are offering pensioners more help. I, and I am sure all other hon. Members, have no difficulty in supporting more help for pensioners, so the principle is fine. It is just that some of the detail is not quite so clever. We need to look at that.
	Not only do I welcome the principle, but I have some pleasure in being here this afternoon. It is pleasing and worth while for a Conservative MP to come along this afternoon to offer support and help to clear up the Labour Government's mess. That is what we are doing: clearing up their mess. It gives me even greater pleasure because it is only Conservatives, with a bit of help from the Liberals and from Plaid Cymru, who are prepared to come to help the Minister out of the hole into which he and his colleagues have got themselves. Not a single Labour Back Bencher has come here to help the Minister to do more for pensioners and to sort out the Government's mess. That must speak volumes.

Michael Weir: I would just like to point out that the Scottish National party is also here helping out as best it can. It is noticeable that not one Labour Member from Scotland has spoken in the debate.

David Wilshire: I grovel to the SNP. I am a great friend of the SNP. I have had connections with it in previous Parliaments. I am desperately sorry—I did not mean to fail to mention it. That intervention helps to underline my point. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for saying that it is not only English Labour Members who appear not to care less about helping pensioners or rescuing the Government, but Scottish Labour Members, and they seem to try to run the Government from time to time. It is a pleasure to be here to see what little bit of help I can give to this discredited Government.

David Cairns: The pleasure is all ours.

David Wilshire: I am glad that the pleasure is all the Labour Government's. I hear the Parliamentary Private Secretary singing our praises—the cavalry is coming to his rescue. I promise him that the more mess the Government make, the more willing we will be to pick up the pieces come the next election.
	The Bill is not, as has been said, about council tax; it is about a brown envelope being bunged to pensioners in the hope that the Government can buy a few votes. It is a Government measure that admits that they are not doing enough for pensioners. They have caned pensioners through extra costs, and they now suddenly realise in a moment of panic that they are not doing enough to help, so they come along with a rushed measure that says: let us give pensioners some money and hope it will be all right. That was done in a panic, and not even from generosity and thought. The Government were suddenly confronted with pensioners who were prepared to go to prison because of the Government's crass incompetence in putting up costs for pensioners. Faced with the thought of the bad publicity of pensioners going to prison because of them, the Government panicked and introduced the Bill.
	Not only that; this is not only a panic measure but a blatant attempt to buy votes. Why, one might ask, are the Government having to do that? The opinion polls say it all. The Government are losing support, so they panic and try to buy votes. It will not work.
	There is one other reason behind the Bill, rather than council tax. I have a suspicion that it owes something to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's having seen a wounded Prime Minister and thinking that if he can leap to the Dispatch Box in the middle of a Budget and produce, like a rabbit out of a hat, some money for pensioners, when the moment comes at which the Labour party decides to get rid of its leader, the Chancellor will be seen as the person who can get rabbits out of hats, and will be placed to take over. The reality of what is happening here this afternoon is as I describe it, which probably explains why the Labour Benches are so empty. Labour Members are too embarrassed to come here and be part of this.
	The Government have tried—I suppose we should take them at face value—to pass the measure off as an attempt to help with council tax. In his Budget statement, the Chancellor said:
	"The evidence shows that their council tax bills"—
	referring to the older pensioners—
	"take a higher share of their income than the rest of the population. So for this year, for those over 70, on top of the winter fuel payment, we will pay an additional £100 to each household."—[Official Report, 17 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 336.]
	There we have the clear attempt to pass the measure off as an effort to help with council tax. So let us take this Labour Government at their word when they say that it is an attempt to deal with the council tax problem, and look at what the problem really is, and at how bad a mess this Government have made of matters.
	Let us take my constituency, as just one example of hundreds. In 1997, when this Government took over, my constituents in Spelthorne on council tax band D were paying £630.77. By 2003–04, the same people were paying £1,170.65. That is an extra £540, or an increase of 85.6 per cent. I have a large number of elderly people on fixed incomes, like many other hon. Members, and the Government are quite right to say that people on fixed incomes, having been asked to find another £540 over that period with very little extra coming in to help them to pay it, need help. My word, they need help! That is all down to what has happened under this Government.
	That puts the £100 into some sort of context. Having caned those people for an extra £540, the Government want us to believe that it is generous for them to give £100 of it back. That does not strike me as generous at all; it strikes me as quite miserly. Again, it is an attempt to get publicity without actually solving the problem.
	If that is the problem that the Labour Government have asked us here this afternoon to try to sort out for them, let us be clear about its cause, which is not what they want us to believe. I can do no better than refer to the Audit Commission, which is a neutral body. It seeks after facts, and reports accordingly. I quote from a summary of a report that it produced entitled "Council tax increases 2002/03 to 2003/04: Why were they so high?" What was it, according to the Audit Commission, that caused the problem? Point 8 of its summary says:
	"We also looked at the impact of changes to grant on council tax increases. The 8 per cent. national increase in grant for local councils was more than in previous years."
	That is the bit that the Government want us to listen to, but it is point 9 that we need to understand. It says:
	"But grant redistribution, which moved grant from London and the south to the midlands and the north"—
	in other words, from my constituents to Tony's cronies, which is my interjection, not a comment that the Audit Commission would make—
	"led to some councils putting up council tax more than others. We found a clear association between the size of grant increase a council received and their increase in council tax."
	The fiddled funding of Labour is the problem that we are addressing. It is a problem that the Government have caused, and that is why I am more than happy to be here to try to put it right.
	The Government make much play of the fact that the additional help for council tax comes on top of the help that they have been giving through council tax benefit, so I thought that it might be useful to look at the figures for council tax benefit in Spelthorne, to discover the reality of that means of helping. I found that in 1997, there were 4,854 claims for council tax benefit, but by 2003–04 that figure had fallen to 4,189. So much for the great boost given by extra council tax benefit to more people. Fewer of my constituents are getting that help; no wonder they need a handout of £100 or more.
	Insult is added to injury, because when I asked Spelthorne borough council about council tax benefit, I discovered that the benefit that it hands out is not automatically received in full from the Government. It has to find 2.1 per cent. of the benefit that it hands out, which makes a bill of £80,000 for my council tax payers. Spelthorne borough council also pointed out to me that the cost of administering that wonderful Government scheme last year came to £313,276, but that the administrative grant from the Government for doing their work for them was just £144,762. If we take into account the extra cost of the council tax benefit, we find that, far from benefiting from the council tax benefit scheme, the council tax payers in my constituency have to fund it for themselves. My council tax payers have had an extra burden of £169,000 dumped on them in the so-called name of helping people to pay their council tax. That is a wonderful achievement by the Government. They say that they will help people to pay their bill, but they then come up with a scheme that puts up the bill that has to be paid in the first place. That is madness. It does not help; it makes matters worse. That is another reason why the £100 will not get us very far. The Government push up the bill, give people a little of that back and think that they are being generous.
	Although I support the Bill in principle, I have some key concerns, which I hope that the Government will be willing to address in Committee. The first has been mentioned, but it needs underlining. It is the concept of waiting until after Christmas for a payment. As I am sure the Minister knows, people start paying their annual council tax in April. Council tax is paid in monthly instalments, but for only 10 months, so people finish paying in January, but the Government in their wisdom will not give them any help to make the April-to-January payments until 31 December. Fat lot of good that is. Most of the money will have been paid by then. People first have to pay the extra that they cannot afford, and then in a so-called bit of generosity, they are told that they will be given a little of it back later. That is not helping people; it is simply making a mockery of them.

Christopher Chope: Does my hon. Friend agree that another anomaly that the Government could have addressed through this Bill is the ability to pay only over 10 months? The ability to pay over 12 months would spread the payment burden more evenly.

David Wilshire: That is absolutely right. I would love to discuss that issue, but I suspect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you would consider it slightly beyond the Bill's terms of reference. I will settle for saying that I completely agree with my hon. Friend and that we will discuss the matter on another occasion.
	I am also concerned that the Government are offering nothing to 65 to 69-year-olds. I readily accept that I and other Members of this House have a significant number of constituents over the age of 70 who are struggling, but the reality is that all of us have constituents over that age who are not struggling. So why are we helping over-70s who need help and over-70s who do not, but ignoring those aged 69 and a half who are in desperate straits—perhaps worse straits than anybody aged over 70? Through that cut-off point the Government are saying to people aged under 70, "Frankly, we don't care about you." My constituents do not want that sort of Government running the country. The Government have to revisit the issue of not helping people under the age of 70 who need help.
	That train of thought leads to another of my key concerns. This entire procedure, which helps the rich and poor alike, is unrelated to the tax and benefit system. The Government do not like my party's future approach to pensions because, in their view, it does not distinguish between the rich and the poor. They are keen to attack our policies, yet they brazenly propose the kind of policy that they keep saying we should not implement: a universal benefit for everybody over the age of 70. These are serious issues that the Minister needs to address in his wind-up.
	So much for my introduction—I now turn to the detail of the Bill. I have a number of queries that I hope the Minister will address. Clause 1, which deals with the "Qualifying individual", bothers me somewhat. According to the Government, a qualifying individual is someone who
	"is ordinarily resident in Great Britain",
	but nowhere in the Bill can I find what "ordinarily resident" means. It cannot mean someone who lives here permanently, because clause 1 also states that a person has to be ordinarily resident for "one day". That does not strike me as a definition of a permanent resident of the United Kingdom. I would like the Minister to reassure us about what "ordinarily resident" means. If it means that one has to be here for just one day in September, I suspect that in September the ferries will be full of coach-loads of people aged over 70, coming to stay for one day in order to get their £100, only to go back where they came from. The Minister needs to reassure the taxpayer that that is not the intention.
	Clause 2 deals with an issue that crops up time and again in the Bill. It states:
	"A qualifying individual shall be entitled to a payment of £100 if at any time in the relevant week—(a) he is single".
	Later, it refers to couples, for which clause 8 provides a definition. The Government have great difficulties with this issue. Clause 8 states that "couple"
	"means a man and a woman who share a household and who are, or who live as, husband and wife".
	If I remember rightly, various Bills passing through this House go out of their way to ensure that, in keeping with the Government's view, we do not make a distinction through the concept of "couple" equalling man and woman. Yet the Bill states that a "couple" must be a man and a woman. What about same-sex couples? Do they not fall within this definition, and if not, why not?
	Similarly, clause 8 refers to those
	"who are, or who live as, husband and wife".
	What does that mean? Are we to have an army of inspectors visiting 70-year-old couples to find out what they are doing? That seems remarkably ridiculous. Moreover, what happens when an elderly brother and sister live together, or an elderly mother lives with her elderly son? Mums live for very long times these days. It is perfectly possible for a mum and a son who are both over 70 to live in the same house, yet they will not be considered a couple, because although they are a man and a woman, they are not living together as husband and wife. The Government have got something terribly wrong here—assuming that they believe in their other legislation. I should be grateful if they sorted that one out for us.

Christopher Chope: Has my hon. Friend looked at clause 2(1)(b)(i), which refers to a single person's
	"either . . . not living with another qualifying individual,"
	or otherwise being in receipt of state pension credit? Does he think that the phrase "living with" is relevant to the definition of "couple", which seems to imply something slightly different?

David Wilshire: If my memory serves me correctly, clause 8 provides no definition of "living with", so that is another thing that the Government ought to clear up.
	There is another issue in respect of couples. Does the term "single" as used in the Bill include a widow or widower? When a spouse dies, one still considers oneself married to them and part of a couple, even though one half of the couple is no longer alive. Will the Bill discriminate against widows and widowers, or does "single" mean something that the dictionary definition does not cover? That issue needs to be sorted out.
	Clause 3 also needs some attention. Subsection (1)(a) refers to situations in which
	"two or more couples live together".
	The Government say that a payment of £100 per household will be made. Where two or more couples live together, and if three or more of the people in question qualify, will that household get £150, £200 or £250, depending on how many qualifying people there are? We need to know the answer to that question. I suspect that there are some problems.
	Clause 3(4) states:
	"Subsection (5) applies to a qualifying individual if . . . throughout the period of 13 weeks ending with the relevant week his ordinary place of residence was a care home."
	So it is suggested that those who live in a care home will not necessarily qualify. Why a period of only 13 weeks? Council tax is paid over a whole year—in 10 monthly instalments, or in one go—so why are those who are in a care home for only 13 weeks of that 12-month or 10-month period disqualified from getting the help given to those who live in their own home for a year? That is thoroughly inconsistent, and perhaps we could be told something about it.
	I turn to clause 4, which deals with disqualifications. Subsection (1)(b) disqualifies a person who
	"is in custody throughout the relevant week".
	So if, for some reason or other, a 70-year-old is locked up for that week, they are disqualified for an entire year. That cannot be right. I accept that subsection (2) provides a definition of being in custody. It states:
	"a person is in custody if he is detained in custody under a sentence imposed by a court".
	So the Government have at least thought of people on remand, who will not be caught by the provision. What happens if the Court of Appeal quashes the conviction of someone who has been under a sentence for a week or so and has been disqualified? What happens if they were under sentence during the relevant week but are subsequently declared innocent? What provisions do the Government intend to make to deal with that anomaly?

Christopher Chope: Does my hon. Friend accept that the anomaly goes further than that? Someone could be sentenced to one week's imprisonment in the qualifying week in September, thereby losing the entitlement to £100, while someone sentenced to six months' imprisonment starting in October would receive the full £100.

David Wilshire: That is absolutely right. The provisions have been ill thought through. Perhaps provoked by the concept of 70-year-olds going to prison, the Government wondered what to do to discourage such people from being sent there. Perhaps they thought that disqualification might induce people who are prepared to martyr themselves to think again. If that is what the Government thought, it goes to show that they do not understand 70-year-olds, most of whom will stick to matters of principle, despite the threat of being penalised by the Government or ending up in prison for a short while.
	Before we vote, the Government must explain clause 5. Under subsection (3)(c)(i), when making a claim, people have to tell the Secretary of State their
	"name, address, date of birth"—
	I have no problem with that because the address could be a park bench and it does not necessarily apply for council tax purposes—
	"and national insurance number (if he has one)".
	I was under the impression—the Minister will put me right if I am wrong—that every British citizen had a national insurance number. If so, the Government have some explaining to do about what led them to include "(if he has one)" in the Bill. Why can we not say that people have to have a national insurance number in order to receive the benefit, which would clear up a few anomalies? That takes us back to coach trips in September: people could come over here to qualify as ordinarily resident for a day; they do not have a national insurance number; they take the money to pay for the coach trip and go back home. The Government must clear up that problem.
	Clause 7 deals with the power to provide for payments. We have been told that this is a one-off measure. We have heard that no provision is being made to continue the benefit in future Budgets, yet the Government are assuming powers to "make regulations"—not to come before the House—to continue the benefit. They want not only to continue with the provisions before us, but to assume powers to do anything they like without reference to the House.
	The Government can make regulations to deal with
	"persons in a specified class".
	If they wanted to, they could give more money to all the people who lived in the north or to all those who voted Labour. That is my understanding of a "specified class". They are also able to make provision for "specified circumstances". In other words, the Bill does not necessarily apply to people who are particularly poor; in future years, it could apply—again without any reference to the House—to whatever circumstances the Government like.
	Under clause 7(3) the Government assume powers to make "exceptions" in future years. What comes to mind is that someone who votes Conservative could be deemed an exception and would not receive the benefit. These are draconian and dictatorial powers, short-circuiting Parliament to enable the Government to do whatever they like.

Malcolm Wicks: indicated dissent.

David Wilshire: The Minister is shaking is head. If he thinks that I am exaggerating, I refer him to clause 7(3)(d), according to which regulations allow the Government to
	"make different provision for different cases or circumstances."
	In other words, the Government want powers not to treat everyone equally, but to treat individuals exactly how they like. Why do they need clause 7? What are they planning; what are they up to? They really must explain.
	Clause 8 deals with the interpretation. As I explained earlier, the Government have got themselves into an awful muddle about couples—men and women, same-sex couples, husbands and wives, people who may or may not be living together. Even though it was not possible to get their mindset round to single-sex couples, somebody somewhere—probably in the basement of the Ministry—considered that polygamy should be mentioned. Under clause 8(2):
	"The provisions of this Act shall apply, with any necessary modifications, to the parties to a polygamous marriage as if they together formed one couple."
	They thought about that, but not other relationships, which I find extraordinary.
	I come to the last part of the Bill that is worthy of mention. Although for the purposes of my brief examination of the Bill's details I have been prepared to accept that there is a council tax link, there patently is not such a link. Payment is to be made to people aged over 70 and it is being passed off as an attempt to help pensioners pay their council tax. That being the case, why clause 10? The clause makes it clear that the Bill applies to England and Wales and Scotland. If the Bill is part of an argument about the council tax, I understand why Northern Ireland is not included, but since it is not about the council tax, why are the Government discriminating against 70-year-olds who live in Northern Ireland? Are they not UK citizens like the rest of us, who pay the same income tax as we do? Why are they picked on and discriminated against in respect of a benefit that is paid to everyone else, irrespective of whether they pay the council tax? Again, the Government must explain themselves.
	We should also give some thought to human rights issues, to which the Bill and the explanatory notes refer. Page 5 of those notes deals with the European convention on human rights, and paragraph 31 quite properly refers to the requirements of article 8 and the "right to family life". I have already pointed out problems with the Bill's treatment of same sex-couples, for example, and the Government will no doubt argue that the ECHR makes it clear that such couples are included in such references to family life. A statement is appended to the Bill to the effect that it conforms with human rights legislation, but I would argue that, if we accept the Government's definition of family life in other debates, the Bill in its current form patently does not comply with article 8. The Government should do something about that.
	Paragraph 32 of the explanatory notes refers to the requirements of article 14 on discrimination. It is arguable that people over 70 are less likely to be in work and have less money than people under 70, but I completely reject the argument that over-70s are more likely to have fixed incomes. The Government have offered no evidence to prove it, and my experience of my constituents suggests that people are on fixed incomes from age 60 onwards. I would have thought therefore that there is a possibility that the Bill fails to comply with the requirement of article 14 not to discriminate. I would be grateful for any clarification.
	To conclude, I am happy to support the Bill. I am pleased that Conservatives are willing to help elderly people. As I said at the outset, it was shameful that no Labour Members were willing to speak. I believe that the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) was not present at that time, which is why I made that point. He has since returned and made helpful interventions. I have a great respect for him, but I sometimes wonder whether his help is as welcome to the Government as help from other quarters is to them. I welcome him back to the debate. I am sure that he, like Conservative Members, is trying to do his level best to dig the Labour Government out of their hole.
	I will take the Government at their word and accept that the Bill is an attempt to put right the catastrophe of the council tax, which was caused entirely by them. I also accept that the Bill is a one-off, temporary measure. I take that as an admission that, by this time next year, the Government will have lost the election. All I can say is good riddance.

Christopher Chope: It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire), who brings to the debate a wealth of local government knowledge and experience, as well as an incisive criticism of some of the Bill's important details.
	This is called the Age-Related Payments Bill, but it might better be described as the Election-Related Payments Bill. All those who have spoken so far agree that that is the motivation of a Government who are in severe panic. They realise that sustained increases in council tax and manipulation of the grant system have resulted in council tax poverty for pensioners. I have spoken about that many times in the House, and I have also presented a petition on the matter on behalf of thousands of my constituents who are worried about being forced into council tax poverty by the Government. Obviously, the Bill will mitigate that to a small extent for some of my constituents, but I doubt very much that it will help the Labour party's electoral fortunes in the Christchurch constituency, even though the area has one of the largest populations of households containing one or more people over 70.
	In my constituency, the council tax bill for many households has increased by between £700 and £1,000 since the Government have been in office. When people heard what the Chancellor said in his Budget speech, they asked me why the Government were offering only £100, and only for this year. Although everything and anything is welcome from this tight-fisted and mean Government, my constituents are very worried that what the Chancellor said in the Budget has not been borne out in practice, and is not reflected in the contents of this Bill.
	Referring to older pensioners, the Chancellor said:
	"The evidence shows that their council tax bills take a higher share of their income than the rest of the population. So for this year, for those over 70, on top of the winter fuel payment, we will pay an additional £100 to each household."—[Official Report, 17 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 336.]
	That is not what the Bill delivers. We have discussed already the question of households that contained a person over 70 at the beginning of the financial year but which will not contain a person of that age in the critical week in September. The Government therefore have not delivered on the Chancellor's Budget pledge.
	It is now a commonplace that we must not listen to the Chancellor's speech so much as look at the small print later, and the Bill is another example of that. I can put it in no other way than to say that the Government have misled pensioner households up and down the country. As the Red Book states, at paragraph 5.36:
	"The Government understands the position of older people on fixed incomes facing pressures such as higher council tax bills and thus a reduction in their standard of living. Council tax consumes a greater proportion of the incomes of older pensioners—who have little or no opportunity to increase their incomes—than it does for other households. Alongside Council Tax Benefit the Government believes that it is right to help older pensioner households with their council tax. Pensioner households with someone aged over 70 will therefore receive a £100 payment to help with their council tax bills."
	The Bill does not deliver on the assertion contained in that crucial paragraph.
	Earlier, the Minister talked about people who are vulnerable. What household could be more vulnerable than one in which a person over 70 dies between now and September? Why should that household be put at a disadvantage compared with one in which a person over 70 remains alive during September, and dies instead in October or November? I urge the Government to reconsider that anomaly, which means that people aged 70 at the beginning of the financial year will not qualify unless they survive the course—and all the vagaries of the NHS—until September.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne said, there are many anomalies in the detail of the Bill. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond), who will wind up the debate, will address some of those anomalies. If he cannot do that today, I trust that he will look at them in Standing Committee.
	The phrase "living with" in clause 2 is ambiguous. It may mean that a household in which, for example, two siblings aged over 70 live together—and in my area it is not unusual for a mother and daughter over that age to be living together—may be entitled to two payments of £100. However, that depends on how "living with" is defined. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will clarify that, for the benefit of the House.
	In an intervention, I referred to the question of people in prison, and my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne also mentioned it. Why should a person who is in prison for a week forfeit entitlement to the whole of the payment for a whole year, when a person who is in prison during another part of the year will get the full benefit of the payment? That is an absurd anomaly. Do the Government really think that that is a consistent approach? I do not think that it stands up to detailed scrutiny, and it shows that the Bill is very much a rushed measure on the Government's part.
	Why does the Bill offer a solution for one year only? The problem of unaffordable, unfair and unsustainable council tax bills will face us next year too. In his Budget statement, the Chancellor implied that, as a result of the balance of funding review, the Government would produce a legislative fix that would change matters in time for next year. If that is the case, I hope that the Under-Secretary will confirm as much when he responds to the debate. However, most hon. Members who have had anything to do with the fraught subject of local government finance will say that it is totally unrealistic to assume that the Government will be able to come up with a fix in response to the balance of funding review—a fix that would bring substantial relief to hard-pressed pensioners—that will take effect in time for the next financial year, which starts in April 2005.
	My constituents very much resent the fact that their state retirement pension increased this year by 2.8 per cent., when their council tax bills rose by a much greater amount. The Minister earlier seemed proud of the fact that the average council tax bill rise was only 5.9 per cent., but that is double the increase in the state retirement pension. That emphasises that the Government believe that it is perfectly reasonable for pensioner households to dip into savings or cut back on other expenditure so that they can afford their council tax bills.
	In effect, the council tax has become a stealth wealth tax. It bears disproportionately heavily on people who occupy properties that have a significant value and which may have increased in value enormously while they have lived in them. Those people must pay a lot more in council tax, even though they cannot afford it.
	We know that there are problems with council tax benefit. A pensioner with even modest savings is not entitled to that benefit in any event, so the benefit does not meet the needs and concerns of many of my constituents.
	In his earlier remarks, the Minister quoted some rather specious figures, but let us take them at face value anyway. He said that the average council tax bill in a Labour area is £870, in a Liberal Democrat area it is £971 and in a Conservative area it is £1,072. That is because, of course, Conservative-controlled councils tend to be—although it is dangerous to generalise too much—in parts of the country where property values are higher.
	Let us consider council tax bills. Why is it that the Bill will give a much higher percentage benefit to somebody living in a Labour council area than to somebody living in a Conservative council area? Obviously, if the bill is £870 in a Labour area and £100 is taken off it, that is a much higher discount than it would be on a bill of more than £1,000. The Minister has played games with percentages and I challenge him to say why it is reasonable that those with smaller bills should receive a disproportionate benefit compared with those who face larger bills.
	My hon. Friends have made the point that the Bill takes no account of the means of the individuals. Why will somebody aged 70 who pays a higher rate of tax be entitled to benefit under the Bill but somebody aged 69 who does not even earn enough money to pay tax at all will not get any benefit?

Roger Williams: I agree that the Government proposals are an inadequate mitigation of an unfair council tax, but the hon. Gentleman and his party support the council tax. What would their solution to the problem be?

Christopher Chope: I assure the hon. Gentleman that I do not support the council tax as it is at the moment. We are preparing for government, and part of that process involves bringing forward detailed policies. I assure the hon. Gentleman that he will not be disappointed when my hon. Friends on the Front Bench produce cogent and coherent policies for addressing the problems of the council tax before the general election. However, many of the problems of the council tax at the moment do not stem from the legislation but from the way in which the Government have manipulated the grant system to the detriment of councils in the south in order to favour their friends.
	I gave the example earlier of the Prime Minister's constituency and Sedgefield district council, which receives eight times as much grant as east Dorset district council. Only a Labour Government could think that that was a fair way to distribute grant. If there is no general election before the next grant settlement, we can expect even more distortions in grant distribution.
	The Minister tried to defend the Government by saying that this year the grant has gone up by a larger percentage amount in Conservative-controlled councils. That is a specious use of statistics, because if east Dorset gets only one-eighth of the grant of Sedgefield, even if east Dorset's grant were doubled it would still be only a quarter of that of Sedgefield. To try to equate percentage increases in very low levels of grant with percentage increases in grants that are already much higher is totally misleading.
	I raised earlier some other ways in which the Government could reduce the plight of pensioners in council tax poverty. One way to do so would be to amend the regulations to allow council tax payments to be made in 12 monthly instalments. That would not take much effort. Indeed, on one interpretation, the regulations would not even have to be changed and the Government could advise local authorities that they could bill over 12 months rather than 10.
	The Bill has been thrown together at short notice. The Government did not realise that they would have to produce primary legislation on the subject and the Bill smacks of panic. It contains some interesting provisions, but much of the detail is anomalous. The most mischievous part of the Bill is the enormous power in clause 7, which the Minister did not attempt to explain and which refers to the age of 60 years. However, the Government claim that it is important to concentrate extra help only on those aged 70 and over. Why then do the powers in clause 7 refer to those aged 60 and over? If those aged 60 and over are in need—many of us have examples in our constituencies of pensioners of that age who find it difficult to meet their council tax obligations—why are the Government resolutely refusing to help them?
	The extra payment is a gimmick and an attempt to paper over the cracks caused by the Government's manipulation of the grants system. The damage has already been done, and the extra payment will mitigate it only slightly. It certainly will not make people forget the sustained way in which they have been made to suffer by this Government's local finance arrangements. I shall support the Bill because many pensioner households in my constituency will benefit from it, and I would not wish to prevent them from doing so. However, I would prefer it if the substantive issue of the manipulation of the grants system that has caused council tax bills to rise so much in my constituency were addressed by the Government. If the Government have taxpayers' money to put into the funding of local government, they should put it into the local government settlement, instead of messing around with gimmicks.

George Osborne: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), who summed up many of the arguments in this debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire), who practically took the Committee stage on the Floor of the House. He gave the Bill the kind of scrutiny that it deserves. It is not a Bill of huge constitutional significance, so it would be unusual to have its Committee on the Floor, but perhaps my hon. Friend, who is an Opposition Whip, will put himself on the Committee where he can explore some of his points in greater detail.

David Wilshire: As my hon. Friend may remember from his time in the Opposition Whips office, we can also ensure that certain people do not get on Committees.

George Osborne: I remember that, although I remember spending a lot of time in Committee as a Whip. Indeed, I have spent much time in Committee this year as a Front-Bench spokesman.
	We have had an interesting debate, thanks to my hon. Friends and those who have contributed from the minority parties. As my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne pointed out, it has also been interesting because of what Labour Members did not say. It is extraordinary that there are no Back-Bench Labour Members in the Chamber to take part in this debate. We have two Ministers, a couple of Parliamentary Private Secretaries and a Whip, but no Back Benchers. We have not heard a single speech by a Labour Back Bencher on the Second Reading.
	Let us cast our minds back to the Budget. The extra payment was the great surprise announcement. The Chancellor produced it, as Chancellors do, with a great flourish at the end of the Budget. He said that he had one final announcement and we could hear the collective intake of breath by loyal Labour Members in anticipation of his great surprise. We also remember the waving of Order Papers, as happens every year, when the Chancellor announced his latest wheeze. Where are they now? Why have they not come and told us what a great benefit the Bill will provide for the pensioners aged over 70 whom they represent? They are not here. Perhaps they are embarrassed because they know that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) said in his excellent opening speech, this is a panic measure. It is a sticking plaster on the gaping wound of the huge council tax hikes made under the Labour Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said, it is not an Age-Related Payments Bill but an election-related payments Bill.
	Normally, it is difficult for the Opposition and those who watch the Government to know what goes on in the bowels of the Government; it is difficult to tell when something is a panic measure—one can only guess. But we know that the Bill was a panic measure from the way that it was introduced. In his opening speech, the Minister for Pensions was coy about when he knew that the Chancellor would be announcing the £100 payment. He said that he would not bore us with his diaries and that we would have to await their publication, but one can imagine the entry for 17 March: "Listening to the Chancellor in the Chamber today, stunned to hear his announcement on council tax payments. Why wasn't I told?"

David Cairns: Just imagine what it will say for today.

George Osborne: It will say, "Had to clear up the Chancellor's mess today on the Floor of the House of Commons. Had to introduce a piece of primary legislation which I wasn't expecting."
	One has to feel sorry for the Minister and his departmental colleagues. The decision was taken by the generals in the chateau—the Treasury—and Captain Wicks and Corporal Pond have to go up the line and implement it; they have to jump out of the trenches with primary legislation that they were not expecting to introduce.

Henry Bellingham: I am sorry to interrupt the flow of my hon. Friend's excellent speech, but does he agree that one of the points that the Minister did not answer was my question about how much extra this primary legislation will cost? What will be the cost of all the legal advice, civil service time, printing, effort and everything else? We must be talking about a figure of around £500,000, yet this is the Government who say that they are trying to cut unnecessary expenditure.

George Osborne: As ever, my hon. Friend makes a good point and is keeping a watchful eye on the interests of the taxpayer. It will be interesting to learn from the Minister how much this fiasco has cost. How much did it cost to draw up this unexpected primary legislation? Even if expletives were not involved, one can imagine that there was a moment of shock when the unfortunate Minister for Pensions was told by his officials, "Excuse us Minister, but the Chancellor seems to have made an announcement and doesn't realise that it requires primary legislation. Shall we call him or will you?" It is clear that the Department for Work and Pensions was left out of the loop.

Paul Beresford: My hon. Friend is all sweetness and light towards the Ministers on the Treasury Bench, but does he agree that some of the blame must go not so much to the Treasury as to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister—one of whose Ministers has just entered the Chamber—and to the Department of Health, because they are the primary cause of the problem we face?

George Osborne: My hon. Friend is right. The only reason that the Minister for Housing and Planning is in the Chamber is that he hopes to get on to the next piece of parliamentary business, which deals with the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill. Thankfully, however, we still have plenty of time to consider this important Second Reading.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) is right to say that the problems that the measure is designed to address—although I shall argue that it does so very poorly—are, first, rising council tax bills, brought about by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, as we must now call it, and, secondly, fixed pensioner incomes, which mean that people cannot pay for rising council tax bills that are several times the rate of inflation. That is the story that has driven the legislation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne and several of my hon. Friends pointed out, council tax bills have risen by 69 per cent. since 1997—equivalent to 3p on the basic rate of income tax. They rose 12.9 per cent. last year and are set to rise 5.9 per cent. this year. In Macclesfield borough council in my constituency, they will rise by 8.4 per cent. this year—[Interruption.]
	The Minister for Housing and Planning says, "Shame." My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) and I are leading a delegation—of two—to see his colleague, the Minister for Local and Regional Government, to make the point that Macclesfield borough council, like many other Conservative-run councils, is well managed, does its job effectively and is debt-free, yet it is having to put up council tax by 8.4 per cent.
	The reasons for that rise were set out by Councillor Wesley Fitzgerald, who represents a ward in my constituency and is a member of the cabinet of Macclesfield council. He gives a clue as to the underlying causes for the Government's introduction of the measure. I am sure that his comments would be true of many borough and other councils. He says that the rate support grant for this year went up by only 0.94 per cent., even though inflation is 2.5 per cent., which resulted in a gearing effect of 4 per cent. on Macclesfield council's bottom line. He says that the council has to pay increases on nationally agreed wage settlements: 70 per cent. of council expenditure is on staff salaries. The community corporate plan will apparently cost the council £80,000 a year. There are targets to be met, such as those set by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on waste recycling. Such targets may be a good thing, but they are set nationally and no provision is made to help local councils to meet them.
	Such costs have forced Macclesfield and other councils to increase their council tax by several times the rate of inflation. After listening to the arguments that have been made in the debate, we can all agree that the band D rate is the correct way to measure the impact of council tax rises and council performance. The average council tax on a band D property is £478 more than it was in 1997. Unfortunately, I did not bring a copy of the 1997 Labour manifesto to the debate but I seem to remember that it made an explicit promise to avoid excessive council tax increases. If an increase of 69 per cent. since the publication of that manifesto is not excessive, I am not sure what is.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley lucidly set out some of the pressures on councils. They have also been noted by the Audit Commission, as several hon. Members pointed out. "Council tax increases 2003/04—Why were they so high?" is the title of the Audit Commission pamphlet. Even if Members cannot read the entire document, I recommend the summary, which is only two and a half pages. The Audit Commission, a wholly independent organisation, makes it clear that the main reasons for council tax rises are due to pressures from central Government.

Paul Beresford: I am no fan of Torbay council, which is renowned as a not especially competent Liberal authority, but it is one of the councils that have been capped. Indeed, not only have the Government capped the council but they have loaded it with 24 comprehensive performance assessments next year, which will cost Torbay about £2.5 million. If gearing is the same—at one for four—that is £10 million extra on the council tax of Torbay residents.

George Osborne: My hon. Friend gives a powerful local illustration of the general problem. I suspect that all Members—even though Labour Members would not admit it—are aware of examples of the red tape and centrally directed targets that are being imposed on their local councils and that have led to huge increases in people's council tax bills. People on fixed incomes or on incomes that are inflation-linked are struggling to pay those huge bills. That includes not only those aged over 70 but anyone whose income is inflation-linked, for example, people working in the public or private sector whose salaries rise only by inflation.
	We heard an interesting exchange about the alternative proposed by the Liberal Democrats and it is fair to say that the hon. Member for Northavon struggled to explain the fairness of an average couple paying £630 a year more under his proposal—not the super-rich, as he implied, but the kind of people that the Liberal Democrat leader was referring to when he said on Radio 4's "Today" programme that the middle classes should pay more as well. Those are the people at whom he is directing the proposal.
	The hon. Gentleman also struggled to explain what had happened to the Liberal Democrat promise to take £100 off people's council tax bills. For the greater information of the House, I have one of the leaflets that the Liberal Democrats distributed during the Brent, East by-election, which makes it absolutely clear that, as a first step,
	"Every Council Tax payer in the"
	country
	"would see their bills cut by £100 in the first stage of the Liberal Democrats plans for a fairer tax system."
	So there it is.
	The hon. Gentleman, whom I have some time for, made a better stab at defending the fact that the Liberal Democrats have abandoned his policy than did his party leader—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The umbilical cord connecting what the hon. Gentleman is saying to the terms of the Bill is stretching very thin indeed, and there may be other occasions when it would be more appropriate to develop the argument on which he is now embarked.

George Osborne: I will, of course, take your advice, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and not explore alternative ways of alleviating the pressure on council tax payers, although I hope that you will allow me to say that the poor old hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) still has that proposal on her website, so no one has told her that the Liberal Democrats have changed their policy.
	The hon. Member for Northavon made one decent point in his speech: the Bill is not a solution to the problem of high council taxes, however it is billed; nor does it have any direct connection, as he properly pointed out, with council tax—hence its rather anonymous name, the Age-Related Payments Bill, which tells everything about the fact that it is not linked to the problem that it is designed to solve.
	Of course, the second issue that the Chancellor had in mind was the problem of low pensioner incomes and the proportion of those low incomes that is now swallowed up by the council tax. It is interesting to look at the figures. I am not sure whether these figures were quoted by other hon. Members, so it is worth mentioning them now. Since 1997, 40 per cent. of the increase in the basic state pension for a typical single pensioner and a third of the increase in the basic state pension for a typical pensioner couple have been taken up in higher council tax bills. A huge proportion of pensioners' incomes is involved, but the Bill does not tackle the root problems.
	The Minister and other hon. Members mentioned council tax benefit and it is worth reminding ourselves that we have a benefit that is supposed to tackle the problem of people unable to pay their council tax bills. The Government should not need to introduce new primary legislation to provide payments to help people with council tax bills because such a benefit already exists.
	The Government cannot rely on council tax benefit to help poorer pensioners because fewer than two in three of eligible pensioners claim that benefit. It is interesting to note that that represents quite a fall on the figure in 1998, when more than 75 per cent. of eligible pensioners claimed their council tax benefit. I have never seen a Government explanation of that fall. There has been a drop in the take-up of council tax benefit and plenty of evidence suggests that that low take-up is particularly skewed towards the poorest and older pensioners. Instead of trying to tackle the problem with council tax benefit, the Government have introduced this sticking-plaster solution to give all older pensioners a universal payment.
	One should note in passing that it is good that the Government now have enthusiasm for universalism and believe in non-means-tested, universal benefits. Perhaps, when the Pensions Bill is debated on the Floor of the House next week, the Government will make a policy U-turn—they have made lots of U-turns recently—to support an increase in the basic state pension by linking it to earnings. [Interruption.] I am sorry, would the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Henderson) like to intervene?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but there has been far too much noise from the Parliamentary Private Secretaries' Bench, which, by tradition, is an area that should be silent.

George Osborne: In the three years that I have been a Member, I have found that those on that Bench are normally the most vocal, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whatever the tradition is.
	The Bill will tackle neither of the twin problems of high council taxes and low pensioner incomes. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne said in his opening speech, the Bill has been given a drubbing by various organisations that speak up for pensioners. It is worth reminding the House that the director general of Age Concern said:
	"It is utterly scandalous that the average council tax bill is rising by more than double the increase to the basic state pension. Many pensioners will be dreading their council tax bill dropping through the letter box and the latest £100 payment from the Government will not ease the burden for many."
	Help the Aged said:
	"There would be no need for gifts like this if the Government was to review its fixation with means-testing."
	The National Pensioners Convention said:
	"One-off payments such as this are not the answer to pensioner hardship. They are often seen by the public as just a cynical attempt to grab votes."
	The "Is It Fair" campaign said:
	"Basically what the Government is doing is tinkering with a system that is fundamentally flawed . . . interestingly we now learn that to make good on their promise, the Government needs to pass a bill through Parliament that could take months. This is no consolation at all to those who cannot afford to pay."
	It is worth mentioning some of the specific questions that hon. Members—mainly my hon. Friends—asked the Government during the debate and reminding the Minister that he should address them when he replies. In particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne asked questions in his introduction and they were reiterated by my hon. Friends the Members for Spelthorne, for Mole Valley and for Christchurch.
	First, there is the question of why pensioners must wait until after Christmas to receive the payment if it is supposed to help them to pay council tax bills. I thought that that question was very effectively put in the debate. Why must people wait until the beginning of next year, when the bills were sent out in April? Indeed, if pensioners are paying their council tax in 10 monthly instalments, they will have finished paying them just as they get the money that is intended to help them make those payments. There is no logic to that, so perhaps the Minister will address that point.
	Will the Minister justify the exclusion of 65 to 70-year-olds? Obviously, there is a question of cost if £100 is to be paid to all people over 65, but did the Chancellor or the Department consider making a smaller payment to all pensioners? Of course, that could have been an option. Why did the Chancellor make his decision? If the Under-Secretary says that he wanted to target the payment on older pensioners, why does the Bill give the Government power to make future payments to people aged 60 or over? In what circumstances would such payment be justified?
	My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said that people over 70 who die before the qualifying week will lose out. They will lose out in a big way as they will no longer be with us, but their widow or widower will lose out on the payment, thus exposing the absence of a genuine link with the payment of council tax bills. The Minister for Pensions addressed only in passing the question of why the Government are asking Parliament to give them authority to make one-off payments in future. What is the principle or theory behind future one-off payments, if that is not a contradiction in terms? Why do the Government feel that they need power to provide payments for people aged 60 and over?
	When the winter fuel payment was introduced, we were told that it was a one-off payment, but it has since been confirmed every year. Will the one-off council tax payment be repeated next year? I would put a lot of money on that outcome, as it would be only weeks before the general election. However, what about the year after if, God forbid, Labour is re-elected? Will the one-off payments continue on a regular basis and, if so, could they still be described as one-off payments? Will the Under-Secretary explain why in the Bill the Government are taking on themselves the power to make a payment not just this year but in future years and, indeed, for different age ranges?
	As I said when discussing the principle behind the Bill, it is a cynical piece of legislation that does nothing to tackle soaring council tax bills—council tax payers are well aware of that—or the low pensioner incomes that mean that pensioners cannot pay those bills. In time, the Government may move towards our policy of linking the rise in the basic state pension to earnings. We will support the Bill, because any help for pensioners to assist with the payment of council tax bills is worth while, but we must wait for a Conservative Government for a lasting solution to the pensioner income problem and, indeed, the council tax problem.

Chris Pond: I have experienced a wave of nostalgia in our debate, as in recent weeks I spent many happy hours in Committee with the hon. Members for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) and for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) discussing the Pensions Bill. On Second Reading, they voted against that Bill, which will set up the pension protection fund to make sure that people do not find themselves in the circumstances in which many others have already found themselves, a measure lauded by the Leader of the Opposition in Prime Minister's questions this afternoon.
	I therefore expected the Conservatives to vote against the Second Reading of the Age-Related Payments Bill. Indeed, I became increasingly convinced that they would do so when I heard the hon. Member for Eastbourne say that the Bill was blatant electioneering and an election bribe. In response to a question from my hon. Friend the Minister for Pensions, however, he said that he would vote for the Bill, even though, according to him, it is a panic measure and an election bribe. I bet that on the doorsteps this weekend and over the next few weeks, the Conservatives will tell people that they will continue with the payments after a general election if, indeed, they ever have the opportunity to do so. They have told the House one thing, but will tell their constituents another.

Nigel Waterson: I am sure that it is only battle fatigue after Committee, but the Under-Secretary may wish to correct what he said about my party voting against the Pensions Bill on Second Reading. We voted for a reasoned amendment, which, of course, is the only procedural way of expressing concern about a Bill—those concerns are even deeper now—without voting against the measure in its entirety.

Chris Pond: I am even more puzzled. The hon. Gentleman declined to give the Pensions Bill a Second Reading because he had concerns about it. Almost every Opposition Member who has spoken this afternoon has expressed concern about the Age-Related Payments Bill, but they have not declined to give this small Bill a Second Reading. I smell a whiff of opportunism in their approach to the two Bills dealing with pensions.
	The hon. Member for Eastbourne spent much of his speech bemoaning the fact that we are using primary legislation to introduce the measure. I doubt that the 5 million older pensioners who will get the benefit of the extra £100 will say, when that payment arrives, "This is shameful. This had to go through on primary legislation. I'm not accepting this. It should have gone through on regulations." That will be of little interest to the 5 million people who will get real help from the measure.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned our council tax benefit take-up campaign, which I think he welcomes. That measure runs alongside this one to give additional help to older pensioners, many of whom, we know, were hurting as a result of increases in the council tax last year. Through council tax benefit, we have made sure that we put every effort into getting the help to those who are entitled to and need it, and in the Budget the Chancellor introduced additional help for those very people. The hon. Member for Eastbourne and other hon. Members are wrong to suggest that take-up of council tax benefit is getting worse. The fact is that more people are entitled to council tax benefit as a result of the changes we made with pension credit. We increased the numbers by almost 2 million. Many of those people still have to get the information necessary to get the benefit that they are entitled to and need.

David Wilshire: Does the Minister find it curious that somebody who is getting only 50 per cent. of the maximum council tax benefit gets the same £100 as the person who gets the full council tax benefit? By definition, the person who gets the additional council tax benefit is in greater need than the person who gets only 50 per cent., so why does the scheme not address that problem?

Chris Pond: As I said a few moments ago, we are seeking to help people in that position in a number of ways. People who are on low incomes for a range of reasons will get help from council tax benefit, whether they are over the age of 70 or below that age, if they are on a low income. We are providing additional help for those over 70 because we feel they have additional need for extra help.

Christopher Chope: Will the Minister give way?

Chris Pond: I will make some progress, if I may. The hon. Gentleman had quite long enough to develop his thoughts. I will give him an opportunity in a few minutes to come in.
	A number of Conservative Members tried to turn the debate into one about council tax rises. That is not what the measure is about, but since they have done that, and since they like the band D comparisons on council tax, I can tell them that for 2004–05 Tory authorities have seen an increase of 5.4 per cent., Labour authorities 4.7 per cent. and Liberal Democrat authorities 6 per cent. I am grateful to the Liberals' local election manifesto 2004 for telling us that
	"Liberal Democrat-controlled authorities over the last 6 years have seen average council tax rises of 6.9 per cent. compared to rises in Labour councils of 6.8 per cent. and Tory-run councils of 8.9 per cent."
	Far be it from me to challenge the Liberal Democrats on any of their arithmetic.

Paul Beresford: The hon. Gentleman is falling into the same fictitious trap as the Minister for Local and Regional Government did on the radio. He picked out one local council and said that its increase last year was 40 or 45 per cent., but as was pointed out to him, it is the bill on the mat that counts, and the bill in that local council was consistently the lowest in the country. So percentages do not count. What counts is the bill on the mat.

Chris Pond: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. It is worth him considering what the bill on the mat means for people working in Tory authorities, as against Labour authorities or Liberal Democrat authorities. I can tell him that the bill on the mat in cash terms is a lot smaller in Labour authorities than in Tory or Liberal Democrat authorities. If he wants to play the argument that way, he can do so, but he will not win the argument.

Hywel Williams: Will the Minister give way?

Chris Pond: I shall make a little more progress, if I may.
	A number of hon. Members asked what would happen in future years, under clause 7. It is true that the Bill provides for a one-off payment this year. The Chancellor made that clear. However, if the House approves the measure, we will take additional powers to give us flexibility so that in future years, if the circumstances are appropriate, the Chancellor may decide to give similar help or some other form of help, using the mechanism of the Bill. There is no commitment to do so, but it seems sensible to make sure that we have that flexibility.

George Osborne: What are those appropriate circumstances?

Chris Pond: The hon. Gentleman must wait until the Chancellor considers those matters, but the circumstances will be fair, prudent and just, which are the principles that drive the Chancellor of the Exchequer in all his considerations.
	I am sure that the hon. Member for Eastbourne did not intend this, but he caused great embarrassment this afternoon by quoting a good friend of mine, Rodney Bickerstaffe of the National Pensioners Convention. He sits on the Benches of the party that cut pensioner incomes by £10 billion, and he quoted Rodney Bickerstaffe in support of his argument for spending the money on the basic state pension, which, like the Bill, would result in a universal increase in pensioner incomes. The difference is, of course, that an increase in the basic state pension would not help the poorest pensioners, but this across-the-board payment is not offset against other benefits and will help the poorest pensioners.
	This targeted help for the over-70s, winter fuel payments and free TV licences for over-75s cost around £3 billion a year, and those measures are cost-effective because they help the poorest pensioners as well as the rest. By comparison, the suggested increase in the basic state pension to £105 would cost an extra £10 billion. As with other measures, we concentrate help on those who need it most—older pensioners and those on the lowest incomes. I remind the hon. Member for Eastbourne that the increase in the basic state pension between 1997 and this April was 7 per cent. above inflation, and that it cost about £6 billion a year.
	The hon. Member for Tatton asked why we are not making the payment until after Christmas, but he must brief himself more carefully. The payments will start to come on stream from November, and we hope to make all 5 million payments before the end of the year. That is not an absolute commitment, but it is our objective.
	The hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) criticised the £100 payment to ease the burden of council tax because it is across the board. However, the hon. Member for Tatton reminded us that, until recently, Liberal Democrat party policy was to make a payment to everybody, rather than just the over-70s and those who are most in need. That policy was quietly dropped after the Brent, East by-election, although the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) is apparently unaware of that change.
	Several Conservative Members suggested that the payment is an election bribe. That prompts the question: why are they going to vote for it? If we were offering an election bribe, we would promise that a Labour Government would continue to make the payments after the next election, but we are not making that promise, because the payment is a one-off. That does not sound like the work of a Government more concerned about the ballot box than the needs of older pensioners.

Christopher Chope: Does the Minister accept that clause 7 contains a power that will enable him to ensure that only people who voted Labour get paid next time?

Chris Pond: I am not going to bother to respond to that.
	The hon. Member for Northavon was rather defeatist as regards ensuring that people who need council tax benefit get that help. I can tell him that we are absolutely determined to ensure that they do get it. I accept that it is means-tested—it always has been. We did not invent council tax benefit any more than we invented council tax. I accept, too, that by increasing the numbers of people who are eligible for that help and get it, we will in the process increase the numbers of people who are on means-tested benefits. However, I do not intend to apologise for the fact that we are ensuring that people get the help that they need and to which they are entitled, especially given that we are today seeking to introduce the £100 universal payment for all pensioners aged over 70.
	Opposition Members seem to find difficult the notion that the Government are determined to get help to pensioners, and the most help to those who need it most, but in different ways—by boosting the basic state pension, by introducing universal payments such as the £100 and the winter fuel payment, and by accepting the need for some income-related benefits. Through those measures, we are spending £10 billion a year more on pensioner incomes than when we first came to office. That compares with the £10 billion cut in pensioner incomes under the last Conservative Government.
	The hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) suggested that this proposal is the result of the Government's policy on council tax. I remind him that his party's policy on council tax is to cut grant to all local authorities by £2.4 billion, which is equivalent to a 10 per cent. increase in band D bills; to cut the grants to poorer councils; and to refuse to use capping powers even against councils such as Shepway, which, as we heard, is in the constituency of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, and which increased band D council tax by 28.9 per cent.

George Osborne: It is a Liberal Democrat council.

Chris Pond: Yes, it is—I should read that into the record, too.
	The hon. Member for Mole Valley suggested that we need to get off the backs of local authorities. I have to tell him, in the presence of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning, that he is a little out of date with the progress of the Government's discussions. We are determined to work in partnership with local authorities, and that is what we are doing. We are giving them the flexibility to make local decisions according to local needs, but in such a way as to ensure that basic minimum national standards apply. That is the context in which we have increased Government grant by 30 per cent. in real terms. Most local authorities have behaved very responsibly this year in proposing council tax increases that are half what they were last year. In the case of those few authorities that decided to go their own way, we had to consider using our capping powers.
	The hon. Member for Mole Valley prayed in aid the Audit Commission report, which, it was suggested, blamed the Government for high council tax increases. However, the chair of the Audit Commission, James Strachan, has said that there are a number of factors behind the rises and that trying to find single point of blame is not only counter-productive, but not borne out by the evidence. The Government are trying to do whatever we can to ensure that the implications of that are minimised in terms of the effect on the poorest pensioners and those on low incomes generally.
	The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) went through the Bill clause by clause. We thought that perhaps he would speak long enough to qualify for the £100 payment. He made some interesting detailed points, which will be considered in Committee, where I look forward to debating them with him. I am sure that he will want to put himself forward to serve on the Committee. However, I must ask my officials to contact his council because he appears to believe that the local authority meets part of the cost of council tax benefit when the central Government subsidy finances all properly made payments of such benefit. I will happily ensure that he and his local authority are clear about that.

David Wilshire: Is the Minister saying that, because my council has paid out more than the Government's help, he will send it a cheque to cover the loss that it is reported to have made? Or does he accuse the council of telling me an untruth?

Chris Pond: I cannot promise to send the hon. Gentleman a cheque. I shall send him an official if he   likes—I am sure that he would be grateful for that.
	I do not know how to respond to the hon. Member for Tatton. Again, he told us everything that was wrong with the Bill but said that he and his colleagues would vote for it. It is difficult to know exactly where one stands with an Opposition who are prepared to say one thing in the Chamber and another on the doorstep.
	The Government are proud that we are giving extra help of £100 to older pensioners through the measure. We believe that they need and deserve that additional help. Those who have listened to our debate will recognise the cynicism and opportunism of Conservative Members, who are prepared to criticise every clause but ultimately do not have the courage to vote against the measure. With our other measures, the Bill adds £10 billion to the amount that we spend each year on pensioners. I repeat that we are proud to spend the money—pensioners deserve and need that help. I commend the Bill to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill accordingly read a Second time.

AGE-RELATED PAYMENTS BILL (PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Orders [28 June 2001 and 6 November 2003],
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Age-Related Payments Bill:
	Committal
	1. The Bill shall be committed to a Standing Committee.
	Proceedings in Standing Committee
	2. Proceedings in the Standing Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on 27th May 2004.
	3. The Standing Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
	Consideration and Third Reading
	4. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
	5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
	Programming Committee
	6. Sessional Order B (programming committees) made on 28th June 2001 shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.
	Programming of proceedings
	7. All other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further message from the Lords) may be programmed.—[Vernon Coaker.]
	The House divided: Ayes 344, Noes 112.

Question accordingly agreed to.

AGE-RELATED PAYMENTS BILL [MONEY]

Queen's recommendation having been signified—
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52(1)(a) (Money resolutions and ways and means resolutions in connection with bills),
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Age-Related Payments Bill it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of expenditure of the Secretary of State under or by virtue of the Act.—[Jim Fitzpatrick.]
	Question agreed to.

DEFERRED DIVISION

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I now have to announce the result of a Division deferred from a previous day.
	On the motion "Visitor Facilities", the Ayes were 333, the Noes 46, so the motion was agreed to.
	[The Division List is published at the end of today's debates.]

Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill

Lords message considered [11 May].

Clause 1
	 — 
	Regional Spatial Strategy

Lords amendment: No. 3.

Keith Hill: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in their amendment to the Bill in lieu of Lords amendment No. 3.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we may take Lords amendments Nos. 3E, 3F, 3G, 3H, 3I and 3J.

Keith Hill: The last time the Bill was before the House, I said that, given concerns about sub-regional planning and the role of county councils in particular, I was prepared to review the package in a way consistent with our policy, in order to make the arrangements work as well as possible on the ground. Given the unhappy procedural events of the past week I have, I think, gone further than is strictly necessary, but I feel that we owe it to local authorities, developers and all involved in the planning system to secure a closure on the legislation.
	Last time, we discussed the statutory guarantee that at least 60 per cent. of the members of each regional planning body would be members of local authorities. We have previously discussed the mandatory role given to county councils and other authorities with strategic planning expertise in advising the regional planning body, as agreed and, I remind the House, publicly signed up to and welcomed at the time by both the Local Government Association and the county councils network. When introducing the amendments in the other place, my noble Friend Lord Rooker said he hoped the CCN would not thank us for our efforts in relation to them, as he would not be able to take such a letter from it seriously. I have to say that I agree with those sentiments wholeheartedly.
	I look to local government, and to the CCN in particular, to ensure that the arrangements work, and to engage constructively in the process. The Government are serious about putting in place an efficient, effective and speedy system that creates sustainable communities, delivers the houses that our people need and protects the environment. That is why we have brought forward these fundamental reforms through the Bill. That is why we have given local authorities £350 million through the delivery grant for planning purposes.
	Let me put on record now, and put local government on notice, that, if the arrangements that we are agreeing to through these amendments prove unworkable because of a lack of good will from the parties concerned, we will come back and amend the law. We must have effective regional planning.
	I turn to the amendments themselves. I will be brief but it is important that this is put on record. The regional planning body will have a duty to consider whether one or more sub-regional frameworks should be included in the regional spatial strategy. The amendment defines those frameworks as
	"different provision in relation to different parts of the region."
	The regional planning body must seek the advice of the counties and other authorities with strategic planning expertise on whether the sub-regional frameworks are desirable. The lead in preparing the draft detailed policies for such a framework must be taken by one or more of those authorities, except when they and the RPB agree that one or more district councils or the RPB itself should do so.

Matthew Green: Will the Minister confirm that, although there is a duty on the RPB to consult the counties about the desirability of these bodies, the decision on whether there will be any bodies will still lie with the unelected RPB, which can, of course, ignore the advice given to it by county councils?

Keith Hill: The hon. Gentleman seizes the opportunity to make an all too familiar propagandistic point, but the simple answer to the question is yes.
	The regulations to part 1 will need to set out any necessary procedural detail. That may include, for example, clarifying that the sub-regional work would be performed according to a brief set by the RPB. In further recognition of county councils, unitary authorities and national park authorities, we will strengthen their role in the following three ways.
	First, we will amend planning policy statement 11 to provide that the panel will examine major issues of contention between the regional planning body and those authorities relevant to a matter being considered at the examination in public. Secondly, we will amend planning policy statement 12 to make it clear that the county councils' advice should be sought and considered by the district councils in preparing local development documents, and development plan documents in particular, given county councils' service responsibilities and expertise relevant to plan implementation. Thirdly, we will make it clear in PPS12 that district councils, in planning the preparation of local development documents, should have regard to the capacity of the county council and/or national park authority to provide prompt advice.
	We have long recognised the sub-regional dimension to the regional spatial strategy and the role of authorities with strategic planning expertise in developing that dimension. As well as the amendments, we will further strengthen that dimension in two ways. We will amend PPS11 to emphasise that although in some parts of a region local development documents should be capable of being prepared within the context of the generic policies of an RSS, in other areas it will be necessary to have sub-regional frameworks as part of the RSS. That might be, for example, where important development or infrastructure proposals cross local authority boundaries. That will help to guide the RPB in applying the policy as expressed in the amendment. We will also draw attention to the role of the RPB in identifying the need for joint local development documents where that will be helpful in implementing the regional planning strategy.
	Further to my reply to the earlier question from the hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green), the RPB takes the decision with regard to the involvement of other authorities but must act reasonably, which includes taking account of the advice that it receives.
	In conclusion, this package of changes, although, I repeat, not strictly necessary, reflects considerable discussion and represents a workable way forward. I commend the changes to the House.

John Hayes: This is, indeed, a memorable day. It is memorable because the Minister for Housing and Planning is engaged in a substantial climbdown. I do not want to delay unduly the House's proceedings and I do not want to cause him unnecessary suffering, but it is important to put on the record the fact that the change in the Government's approach to this matter is a profound one, which has been forced from them. They have come kicking and screaming to a point at which they now acknowledge that there should be greater competence for sub-regions—in practice, that will usually be counties—in the business of drawing up planning strategies.
	That is a vital change, which has been wrought from the Government by the good work done principally, I have to say, in the other place by peers who have put democracy first. To a lesser degree, I humbly point out that it has been helped by my hon. Friends and me in this House, as we have sought to emulate the strong and persuasive arguments made by peers, both Conservative and Liberal Democrat. The Liberal Democrats have played an important and valuable role, and it would be wrong of me not to mention that. I have enjoyed the close co-operation with the hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green) that has brought the Minister to the point at which, contrary to all his earlier suggestions—contrary to his claims that the case that we made on this specific subject was not persuasive—he has finally agreed that it is vital for local people and communities to have a critical role in the development of regional spatial strategies.
	"Regional spatial strategies" is an arcane phrase for major developments that will affect local communities profoundly, alter the character of the local landscape, cityscape, townscape or villagescape, and possibly have long-term effects on the quality of life of countless thousands of people. You will remember, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because you follow these matters assiduously, that the Minister made a bold but entirely unconvincing case for that power being transferred wholesale to the regions. He told us that the regions would be the best level at which people could make their representations. He believed, I think genuinely, that the regions were more in touch with local people than their elected representatives in districts and counties.
	Why the Minister came to that view almost defies understanding, but certainly that was what he put to the House from the Dispatch Box when challenged repeatedly by my hon. Friends and me, and by Members from the other parties represented here today—although I have to say, not in great numbers.

Matthew Green: The hon. Gentleman should speak for his own party.

John Hayes: Well, I reckon that we have a ratio of 5:1, and given that the Liberal Democrats constantly crow in their leaflets that they care more about local democracy than does either of the other two parties, it would be unreasonable for the hon. Gentleman to play that hand too vehemently.
	So the Minister has told us that there has been a change of heart—a turnaround. The truth is that there would have been no such reverse in his position had he not passed the Bill to the Lords—with what he described as a difficulty—in such an inappropriate form that it would have died but for the proper ministrations of that place and his ultimate but reluctant acceptance of its proposals. The truth, as we know from what was said in the other place, is that the Government were forced to make this change.
	When such cock-ups occur—if I might use that term—it is the Minister who must accept responsibility, for the buck stops with him. There is no use in his saying that he was badly advised, or that the cause was his busy schedule. He is a man with many personal interests who has many other fish to fry, but he cannot argue that that is why he was unable to pay sufficient attention to the matter. He is a lateral thinker and a man of wide interests, and it may well be that this important measure slipped down his list of priorities and escaped his notice. Perhaps he put it in his Sunday afternoon box and was unable to get to it because it was right at the bottom.
	Notwithstanding the allowances that we make because we wish to be kind and generous to the Minister today, he was ultimately responsible for passing the Bill to the Lords in a form that would have killed important Government proposals. He was then obliged to change his position, quickly and fundamentally, on an issue that had been discussed in the other place and here ad infinitum. Indeed, he had previously made absolutely clear his opposition to the case that was properly made by local representatives, county councils, Lords and Commons.
	So the Minister appears before us today rather like a sinner entering heaven. The truth is that we must treat him with generosity. You will know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that St. Luke tells us that the
	"joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth"
	is a glory to behold. We accept that the Minister is a repenting sinner, and we understand that he has recognised the important case that has been made for local democracy. As he said, it is worth putting on the record just what that means in practice. It means that planning policy statements 11 and 12 will be amended, and that the Bill will include a duty to consult and to seek advice from the sub-regions, which, for the most part, means the counties.
	The Minister made a useful point in answer to an intervention from the hon. Member for Ludlow. He said that in having a statutory duty to take account of such matters, the regions must also act reasonably. If the regions ignore that aspect of the legislation, the sub-regions—the counties and districts—and other interested parties might well have a case in law. If the regions simply ignore the Minister's important U-turn, the counties will undoubtedly complain fiercely on behalf of local communities that it was no U-turn at all, and that the Minister was simply paying lip service to local democracy to save his wretched Bill.
	Of course, the problem is that the longer one takes to climb down, the further and harder the climb-down becomes. If, in the spirit that the Minister showed when dealing with other matters, he had listened carefully to the proper concerns of this House and the other place about local democracy, and heard the case that we made about political legitimacy—as you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the regions will not be directly elected; they will be remote and only indirectly accountable to local people—we would have welcomed his conversion in a spirit of good will, and with characteristic Tory generosity. However, because the conversion had to be squeezed from a reluctant Minister—it was facilitated by the Government's procedural error, which can be described only as incompetence—our generosity is offered, frankly, in a rather different manner and style and at a rather different time.
	We are still going to be generous and say that the Minister was right in what he said today about the role of sub-regions in the drawing up of strategies and about the need at each stage of the process to involve all those who can speak directly for the people because they are directly elected and accountable to them. He was also right that the amendment improves the Bill. It is still not, I have to say, a great Bill and perhaps not even a good Bill, but it is certainly a better Bill than it would have been if the Minister had not accepted the Lords amendments. It is in that spirit of generosity that we accept the Minister's opening remarks today.
	The Lords have been so insistent on this matter because, not for the first time, they speak for the people when the Government speak simply for themselves. There is a certain irony in the fact that an upper House that has suffered so many slings and arrows from Government Members is making the case to protect the interests of people and local communities in respect of major development decisions; and that, in so doing, the upper House is articulating the argument for democratically elected councils more effectively than Ministers are able or willing to do.
	I welcome the change and would have liked to see more. I am sure that that is what the hon. Member for Ludlow will say, and I look forward to hearing his remarks. He will doubtless say that he would have liked more on the binding nature of inspectors' reports, but I believe that the Minister may move a little further in our direction on that matter too. I know that the Minister has considered the matter carefully and I believe that he may offer further concessions on inspectors' reports. He may not do so today, but he may want to go away and think further about it. The hon. Member for Ludlow may also say that further concessions on regional authorities are necessary. We have debated at length whether regions should exercise powers when they are not directly elected. The important concession that we want is a firm step in the right direction.
	I do not want to abbreviate the argument, so let me provide a couple of examples of how that might work. Sometimes major regional developments and plans—or major infrastructural projects—may affect several counties and spread across a number of districts. They may sometimes go beyond the boundaries of a region. In those circumstances, it is vital that the views of local people—articulated through the districts and counties—be taken into account.
	As the Bill stood before, that would have been almost impossible. It is true that the regions would have taken some notice, I guess, of strongly felt local opinion properly expressed to them, but there was no statutory obligation on the regions to take account of local opinion or advice.
	The Minister said that, in those cases, the amendments to PPS11 mean that sub-regions will be asked to comment on infrastructural changes in major developments that affect their areas. We also heard that amendments to PPS12 mean that the county council, as the provider of a range of services, will be able to make a case about the impact of recommendations from the regional authority in respect of that provision. Those important changes recognise the vital role of counties and show some understanding of local communities' real concerns.
	I shall not go on any longer, as other hon. Members want to contribute to the debate. I certainly look forward to what the hon. Member for Ludlow has to say, and I have no doubt that he will want to offer a glowing tribute.
	In conclusion, it is probably worth saying that the Minister is widely regarded as one who genuinely listens to comment from across the House. He is well respected for his willingness and ability to consider criticisms, suggestions and proposals from hon. Members of other parties. When he can, he takes them on board. As was evident only yesterday in connection with the Housing Bill, he has sometimes been able to amend Bills accordingly.
	That is the context in which our criticism of the Minister must be regarded, but we are critical of him—for not doing weeks ago what he has done today, for exercising the House's patience by refusing to accept the arguments that he now endorses, and for being forced into his current position by the inefficiency of his Department. Ultimately—because the Minister has to report upwards—I suppose that he has been forced into this position by the incompetence of the Deputy Prime Minister.
	We will not press the matter because, at last, we agree with the Government and accept what they are saying. In short, we will not press the matter, because we have won.

Matthew Green: I congratulate the Minister on finally completing a process that has lasted 18 months. The passage of the Bill through the House must be one of the longest in parliamentary history. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Sir Sydney Chapman) has left the Chamber—perhaps he could not stomach much of the speech by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes)—but he and I are the sole survivors from 18 months ago. Even the Minister involved changed midway through, although that was probably for the better. It has been a long and, at times, tiring process, but the end is in sight.
	The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings claimed that the Government's acceptance of the Lords amendments was a great victory. It is not, and the hon. Gentleman is sadly mistaken if he thinks that it is. I know that he is a romantic, because that is how he describes himself, so I shall put the matter in terms that he can readily understand.
	Two amendments were ping-ponging between the Lords and this House. The Government made a very small amount of movement on one amendment, but the Conservative peers completely caved in on the other. That is not what the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings wanted, and I am certain that he would have liked his colleagues at the other end of the Corridor to keep fighting. However, I shall put the matter in terms that he will understand.
	We have seen Colonel Spelman, Captain Hayes and Lieutenant Syms line up their troops to charge at the massed ranks of Labour Members set to defend centralism and reduce democratic accountability. Captain Hayes shouts, "Charge!" and he, the lieutenant and the colonel charge across the field. They get halfway over, only to discover that their troops have not moved. Whatever the hon. Gentleman wanted, the Conservative peers have not followed him. They have let him down badly and the Government off the hook.
	The Government have not only succeeded in persuading the Conservative peers to drop their opposition to the amendment on regional powers, but have pulled the wool over their eyes on the sub-regional groupings. To explain why, I shall quote Lord Rooker. I know that when I quote Lord Rooker, the Minister fears that I shall say "spivs" or something of the sort, but in this instance, he will be happy with what Lord Rooker said. However, it will not be palatable for the Conservatives. Lord Rooker described what the amendment would do:
	"The amendments in lieu make it a duty"—
	gosh, that sounds good—
	"that the regional planning body should consider whether it would be desirable".
	The regional planning body does not have a duty to do something, merely to consider whether something might be desirable. That is not some great victory; it is a smokescreen from the Government. Lord Rooker continued:
	  "The amendments require"—
	again, "require" sounds firm, strong and decisive—
	"the regional planning body to seek the advice of the counties and other authorities with strategic planning expertise on the desirability of making such provision."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 11 May 2004; Vol. 661, c. 162.]
	That is no great victory, but mere flim-flam from the Government to persuade the Conservatives that they have achieved something.
	The Conservatives have let down local councils. They have let down local councillors who have protested at these powers being taken away from county councils and unitary and metropolitan authorities, and given to unelected regional planning bodies. When Conservative councillors protest about their party's failure in months to come, I will point out exactly where the blame lies.

John Hayes: I understand that the hon. Gentleman might have wanted more, but to refuse to accept that the amendments are a step forward is churlish. I do not say that about his behaviour, but because now we have this victory it is important to celebrate it joyfully.

Matthew Green: It is a step forward, but such a small one. I am just pointing out that no great victory has been won. It is a tiny victory and the hon. Gentleman described it as though it were a U-turn by the Minister to rank with the Prime Minister's U-turn on a referendum on the constitution for Europe. It does not begin to approach that.

John Hayes: We are speaking not about the kingdom of Blair, but the kingdom of Hill. In that kingdom, the amendments represent a significant U-turn. The hon. Gentleman talks about the duty to decide whether it is desirable to consult sub-regionally. If the regional planning body did not do so, in a case such as Stansted or a similar major development, the courts would not look on it very favourably.

Matthew Green: It would appear that the hon. Gentleman wants there to be court cases in which county councils challenge regional planning bodies on how reasonable they have been. That is not a very effective approach, and I am sure that the Minister would not want that. Indeed, he has already threatened that if that happens he will come back to the House to remove this minor provision. In reality, of course, we will not have county councils taking regional planning bodies to court. If county councils were to do that, they would find that the Minister whipped their toys away as soon as they started playing with them.
	We need to put the matter into context. Much more could have been gained, although I shall not go over that ground, as we are debating the Lords amendment. We have gained something, but not very much. It is not worth voting either for or against the amendment—it amounts to nothing. I am disappointed that after so much fine talk, and notwithstanding his eloquent debating skills, the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings failed to persuade his colleagues in the other place to do their job properly.
	As I said in earlier debates, most of the Bill will improve the planning system. Its failure lies in the absence of provision for democratic accountability at regional level, and the amendment fails even to begin to deal with that issue. The Minister probably chuckled into his cocoa last night when he heard the result in the Lords. He was probably delighted, but the Conservatives have been sold a fast one, which, when their councillors throughout the country try to explain it, they will come to regret.

Keith Hill: With the leave of the House, I should like to respond to some of the observations that have been made in our exchanges, especially some of those made by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes), who speaks on behalf of the Conservative party.
	The hon. Gentleman crowed that this was a memorable day. He accused me of a substantial climbdown. He said that the amendment had been "wrought" from me. He accused me of lack of attention on the matter and speculated that it had fallen down my list of priorities. On the procedural matter, he accused me of incompetence. On that issue, I remind him that Ministers act, as always in such matters, on the advice of the Clerks of the House. The hon. Gentleman is well aware of that. He is also well aware that we acted with due diligence, as was made clear and accepted—I stress that point—in the other place.
	The hon. Gentleman should realise that we are not playing a game. This is not about schoolboy pranks and good or bad losers, but about the Government's commitment to creating a planning system fit for the 21st century and about the obstacles that have been put in the way of that purpose. Thousands of people in this country need homes, yet developers and house builders complain of delays in the planning system that slow down the delivery of those homes. The CBI has told the Government that inefficiencies in the planning system undermine the competitiveness of British industry.
	As a result of those representations the Government have tried to respond to the needs of our people and our economy by reforming the planning system to make it fairer, more flexible and—critically—faster. One of the important ways in which we are speeding up the process is by removing what is, we believe, one unnecessary tier in the system—the counties—to create a streamlined regional, local two-tier system. However, I fear that the amendments that I have reluctantly accepted today could go some way towards undermining the streamlining of the system.
	I remind hon. Members that our elected House has repeatedly voted in favour of the two-tier system and has twice voted against the substance of the amendments, yet Conservative and—notwithstanding the somewhat emollient nature of the speech made by the hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green), who speaks for the Liberal Democrats—Lib Dem peers have exploited the Government's minority position in the House of Lords to foist those changes on us. It is unacceptable that the unelected House should override the repeated wishes of the elected House in that fashion. It is also unacceptable that it should happen with the encouragement of the Opposition parties in this place. On both the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill and the Housing Bill, Conservative and Lib Dem spokesmen have constantly treated us to threats of what their counterparts in the House of Lords would do to those measures.
	The Conservative and the Liberal Democrat parties compete with Labour in the general election, lose fair and square in the democratic electoral process and then collaborate with the unelected House to defeat the purposes of elected Members of Parliament. Frankly, that is a parody of democracy. The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings referred to the Lords speaking for the people. What nonsense!

John Hayes: The Minister is right: this is not a game. It is not a game when people are defending local communities from unsuitable development and when people are trying to resist power being transferred to unelected regions, remote from where those changes might take place. It does the Minister little credit to use the debate as a vehicle to attack the House of Lords, where both Liberal Democrat and Conservative peers have consistently and steadily defended the interests of those communities and local democracy. The Minister should take this one on the chin, recognise that he has made a mistake and have a little more good grace.

Keith Hill: The hon. Gentleman blusters, not for the first time in these matters. In fact, these matters have been thoroughly dealt with in the House. As his colleague the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) acknowledged in Committee, we have thoroughly ventilated the issues of democratic accountability and responsibility. Again, the repeated wishes of the House have been overridden by the House of Lords.

Oliver Heald: Will the Minister give way?

Keith Hill: No, I will not give way.

Oliver Heald: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the Minister to make this great show and pretence of bluster about the other place, when the truth is that the Government have never even mustered two thirds of their peers in any of the Divisions in which they have been defeated?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman knows that that is a point of debate, not a point of order for the occupant of the Chair.

Keith Hill: I am not in the least surprised that the Conservative party—the historic defender of privilege—has behaved in that way with regard to the other place, but I am surprised that the Liberal Democrats, who are, in principle, so committed to elected democracy, have adopted such double standards during the consideration of the Bill. If the Liberal Democrats can offer £100 off everyone's council tax in the Brent, East by-election last September and forget that offer for the June elections, who can be surprised at such double standards?
	I signal again the Government's acceptance of the Lords amendment.
	Lords amendments agreed to.

Promotion of Volunteering Bill [Money]

Queen's recommendation having been signified—

Fiona Mactaggart: I beg to move,
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Promotion of Volunteering Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any administrative expenses incurred by a Minister of the Crown by virtue of the Act.
	Before speaking to the money resolution specifically, I should explain that my purpose in moving the resolution is to allow full discussion of the issues raised about the Bill in Committee. I gave such an undertaking on Second Reading, and I want to ensure that the concerns raised by the Bill are fully aired. The moving of the money resolution is essential to that process.
	The Bill, which was introduced by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier), is likely to have some expenditure implications for the public purse. The Bill will require the Secretary of State to make provision, by regulation, for training courses about volunteering for members of the judiciary—including, in particular, sport and adventure training, as well as training in the workings of the Bill. It provides that those regulations may prescribe that that training be provided by courses established by Sport England, the Central Council for Physical Recreation, and such other bodies as the Secretary of State may see fit. It also provides for the Lord Chancellor to lay before Parliament an annual report setting out the training courses provided and the number of judges who have attended those courses or any other training on the provisions of the Bill. Training would have to be provided for all members of the judiciary who deal with personal injury cases, including all district judges and circuit judges in the county court, as well as all judges sitting in the High Court Queen's Bench division.
	Training of members of the judiciary is the responsibility of the Judicial Studies Board, an independent body funded by the Department for Constitutional Affairs. The provision of training courses raises a number of cost issues, including administrative costs such as the provision of appropriate accommodation and catering; the cost of lost sitting days caused by the removal of judges from their courts to attend the course, which may also involve the cost of providing a deputy to sit in place of the judge concerned; and miscellaneous travel and subsistence costs incurred by the judges in attending the course. Under the scheme proposed by the Bill, those costs would have to be met either by the Judicial Studies Board or by the prescribed body, and it is likely that any such body would require Government funding for that purpose. Clearly, the cost implications will depend on a number of factors relating to the structure and duration of the training, such as the location and facilities used, and whether or not the training was residential.
	As a broad indication of the possible costs, there are approximately 2,380 members of judiciary who attend JSB civil seminars and could deal with personal injury cases. The provision of dedicated one-day non-residential seminars for all those judges and the provision of deputies to sit in their place would probably involve additional costs of about £1 million. Those costs could be reduced if deputies were not provided, but sitting days would be lost and cases delayed.
	We do not anticipate that any significant additional cost will arise from the requirement on the Lord Chancellor to report annually to Parliament. The JSB is already required to publish an annual report to the Lord Chancellor on its activities and to place copies in the Libraries of both Houses. Those annual reports give the number of judges attending courses and the topics covered at each course. There could be a small additional cost if the training was provided by a prescribed body rather than the JSB. I commend the motion to the House.

Julian Brazier: I am grateful to the Minister for moving the motion, thus allowing further debate on my Bill. As she explained so lucidly, the money resolution arises only from a small part of the Bill that makes provision for judges' training. That training is sorely needed, and the cost will in fact be much smaller than she suggested.
	At a time when obesity and antisocial behaviour are both increasing among young people and, indeed, disfiguring our country, the efforts of volunteers, voluntary bodies and teachers who work in their spare time to provide sport, recreation and adventure training is more important than ever. Much of that work, however, has been undermined by a number of regrettable court judgments in the past few years. Five consecutive surveys have shown that the blame culture and the threat of litigation are the primary barrier to volunteering in sport and adventure training.
	I hope that it is in order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to touch on one judgment and a related case to illustrate why more judicial training would produce results more in accordance with common sense. The Royal Yachting Association has provided me with details of the case of Richards v. Wanstall, which was considered in 1995 by the Queen's Bench division of the High Court. A lightweight 25-ft racing yacht was manoeuvring to leave a marina berth in Plymouth when the skipper realised that it had been caught by a gust of wind and might hit an adjacent moored yacht. He therefore asked an experienced crew member to run forward with a fender, but the crew member stumbled. It took the High Court five days to consider something that I first did as a six-year-old—putting a fender out when a wind is blowing. At the end, it ruled in favour of the litigant.
	That case must have been considered by the insurance company dealing with a subsequent case that never reached court, because it decided to make a horrendously large settlement.
	Paddle sport relies heavily on volunteers at all levels. At a marathon last year, crews were competing over a 30-mile course in racing kayaks. Part of the race course passed through a narrow half-mile-long cutting. A volunteer marshal was positioned at each end to warn crews entering it that powered craft could present danger of a collision. A powered boat entered the cutting, followed a few minutes later by a kayak crew. The marshal allowed the kayak to enter on the strict understanding that the crew were not to try to overtake the powered craft. They ignored the instruction and there was a collision. A case was brought against the volunteer marshal. The insurance company decided, on legal advice, to settle out of court. That has had a devastating effect on future insurance for the event. The volunteer has resigned and will never volunteer again. The issue is not just money.
	Lastly, I shall deal with costs. I was interested to hear the Minister's comments. I should stress that there are any number of voluntary organisations that would be willing to provide a one-day course, or perhaps even a longer course, free. The Girl Guides made that clear from the beginning, and they are the biggest youth movement in the country. This morning I had an e-mail from the Boy Scouts legal adviser, stating that they would be delighted to lay on something similar. There is no reason why we should lose sitting days. If their lordships were willing to give up a weekend for such a course, which it hardly seems unreasonable for them to do, no sitting days need be lost. As much of the activity takes place over a weekend, it would be a convenient time to organise such a course.
	There could be some travel costs, but those would verge on the minimal, only just reaching the threshold where we would need a money resolution at all. I thank the Minister for tabling the motion and I urge the House to support it.

Jacqui Lait: I appreciate the opportunity to support the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier), and the motion. I accept my hon. Friend's argument that the Minister is generous in her estimate of the cost, and that, acting judiciously, the judiciary may be able to reduce the cost so that it would not be too great a burden on its training budget.
	In the two Committee sittings on the Bill, there was an interesting exploration of the issues, so many of which are directly related to legal judgments and to the consequences of the compensation culture that continues to bedevil the volunteering movement. That includes not only the volunteers who work for charities, but teachers and people who are paid in some areas in order to ensure that kids as well as adults have access to the sort of adventurous lifestyle that I expect most of us in the Chamber were used to when we grew up. I think of some of the things I do now, and I know why my mother said, "Don't do it", but I would hate to think what would happen to us as a country and a culture if we could not provide adventure training and risk-taking ability so that our future generations can learn to assess risk effectively.
	Unfortunately, the compensation culture drives organisations to be careful and volunteers to give up volunteering. With the changes in our lifestyles, there are greater and greater opportunities for people to volunteer, but if we cannot assure them that they will not appear in court, having taken all the professional and training opportunities necessary for them to be effective leaders and trainers, we will have a poorer life. We need to ensure that members of the judiciary have access to the best information so that when then come to make up their minds in compensation cases, they are well qualified—as is the entire legal profession—to assess risk in the context of volunteering.
	I do not intend to cite cases, because other hon. Members are better at it than me—indeed, they are trained to do it. Listening to the debate in Committee, I was conscious that it is important when such cases come to court—the Bill's main purpose is to introduce a statement of inherent risk, so hopefully fewer and fewer cases will come to court—and imperative for the good of the UK and future generations that judges base their decisions on a true and clear view of risk, that they take that view properly into account in reaching a decision, and that that view coincides with common sense. I therefore take great pleasure in supporting my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury and the Minister.

Derek Wyatt: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier)—we bat together in Kent on so many things—for his persistence with the Bill, which is so important to the glue that makes up our communities. Without volunteering, communities would not exist, and the cost would ultimately return to the state, which we are trying to avoid.
	I shall give one example. A boy broke his neck playing rugby. Whom did his parents sue? It was not the school, the union or the school's union, but the referee—and guess what? The referee lost. What an appalling situation. Referees in not only rugby, but any active sport are worried and nervous about whether they can afford not the time but the risk of a court case.
	The crux of one part of our society depends on volunteering, probably because of the religious side of our nature which goes back hundreds of years. I hope that the House eventually supports the Bill, but for the moment, let us support this money resolution.

Lembit �pik: I praise the Minister for acting in good faith on the money resolution, which she promised to do at an earlier stage. The sum of 1 million may sound like a lot of money, but it is actually small considering what the country, and indeed the Government, will get from it.
	Training is important to make sure that legal judgments are right. The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) mentioned the importance of common sense. On several occasions, my father has said to me, Sense is not common, and I think about what could go wrong if we do not invest in training the judiciary to apply the law correctly.
	I have had a fair number of accidents, most of which were self-inflicted. In 1971, at the age of six, I fell out of a tree and on to a post, causing considerable damage to myselfI did not land on my head, before anyone suggests that. In today's litigious society, I might have attempted to sue my parents.
	In 1998, I nearly died on a hillside in Wales in a paragliding accident. I could have sued the descendents of Owain Glyndwr or myself for reckless use of gravity. Under the regime that the money resolution makes possible, I hope that those who make legal decisions will receive sensible training and that such frivolous and vexatious claims will not be made.
	I am sure that the relatively small investment that the new regime requires will be repaid to not only the Government, but society as a whole. The Government will benefit because, as the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt) said, volunteering saves them a lot of money, and any disincentive to volunteering costs them a lot of money. Moreover, in terms of being a public-spirited country, there is an enormous advantage in taking away the fear of being sued from individuals who act in good faith for no financial reward, but simply because they think that is a good thing to volunteer.
	In that context, the money resolution is a sensible, proactive effort to ensure that the Bill can work. I hope that the positive spirit in which the Minister approached this small part of the Bill is a promising sign that she will consider positively the intent of the Bill as a whole, which can bring great credit not only to the hon. Member for Canterbury, but to the Government, for finally coming to terms with a situation that has concerned many volunteers for a considerable period.

Andy Reed: I welcome the money resolution and was pleased to see the Minister move it. One of the good aspects of the proceedings in Committee has been the degree of cross-party support for finding a solution to this problem, although not necessarily for all the details along the way. It has been useful to explore ways in which we can make progress.
	In reality, 1 million is not a great deal of money, given that there are 1.5 million volunteers, 26 per cent. of whom are in the sports sector. That 1 million is intended to ensure that those volunteers continue to want to make some contribution, not only now, but in the future, to the 150,000 sports clubs at the grass-roots level.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt) is right about rugby. I still enjoy playing every Saturday afternoon, and I think that I have a couple more seasons left in me, although my wife probably wishes that I had packed up 10 years ago. The next stage for me is to start to think about coaching or refereeing. Nowadays, every Saturday afternoon before the match the referees have to run through the whole procedure with the front rows and make sure that the packs go down in the proper manner. We know the risks as rugby players, but have to go through that procedure.
	It is a pity that 1 million has not already been spent on training judges, because then we might not be in this ridiculous situation, which was illustrated by the long list of cases that the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) brought before us. If that money had been spent 20 years ago, it could have saved us a lot of effort in trying to prevent the compensation culture that has developed.

Tim Boswell: There is no need for me to make a speech, because I entirely endorse what the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members have said. Does he agree that although it is all very well to have a money resolution committing us to expenditure on a particular piece of legislation, the training of the judiciary, which is highly desirable, is a different matter, because it should be implicit in the passing of that law?

Andy Reed: If only that were true. Hon. Members make assumptions about such matters. We sometimes have to wonder whether the judiciary are trained at all when constituents bring to our surgeries cases that make us sit there in utter amazement at the judgment that was made.
	Overall, we need to give confidence back to the sector so that people are willing to volunteer to take part in many of the activities that we wish to see. In the context of the health agenda, volunteers make a significant contribution to fitness and tackling obesity. If we do not make progress through the Bill or through other mechanisms that I hope that the Minister will bring forward, we will do this nation a disservice, and we will all pay in the long run. I support the motion and hope that the rest of the House will do so.

Eric Forth: I do not welcome this money resolution at all, because the Government are presenting us with the undefined blank cheque to which we have become accustomed. We are being asked to authorise the payment of any administrative expenses incurred without any indication of how much we will be spending. None of us should support it, because if we did we would have shamefacedly to go back to our voters to admit that we had failed to discharge our duty in looking after their interests by voting money the amount of which we are completely unaware.
	However, on this occasion, rather unusually, I shall offer the Under-Secretary faint praise. Sheagain, unusually but I hope that it will set a precedentwent through the elements of the Bill that would mean a charge to the public finances and, miracle of miracles, gave us her estimate of the amount. That is a genuine breakthrough and we should note the day, date and time that it occurred. Perhaps we should expect Ministers to do that in future so that, even if an amount does not appear in the motion, we could at least refer to their comments in Hansard for some guidance. Perhaps you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and your colleagues might wish to hold Ministers to that.
	There is, however, a catch, which made me suspicious. I have reason to believe that the Government support the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) less than wholeheartedly. Do not ask me how I knowI simply have reason to believe it. Is it a coincidence that, when the Government support a private Member's Bill, they do not want to suggest how much it might cost? Nothing could wring an estimate of cost out of Ministers in those circumstances. They simply say, We like the Bill. Trust us. Vote for the money resolution. When the Government are not keen on a measure, they come up with some figures and a cost estimate.
	I do not know whether the Under-Secretary was trying to frighten hon. Members by brandishing the figure of 1 million. Given that, last night, the House voted 5 million to build some absurd new facility on our premises, 1 million almost appears a bagatelle. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury smiles. He should be able to rest safe in the belief that, having voted 5 million for ourselves, it would be niggardly not to support the resolution for a mere 1 million for the excellent purposes for which the Bill provides in the opinion of so many hon. Members.
	The money resolution is therefore unusual. It is unnecessary to dwell on the matter further, except to say that I have made a note of the Under-Secretary's action. The Government deputy Chief Whip was sitting on the Front Bench a moment ago, and he, too, has made a note of it. The Under-Secretary has therefore either set a shining example to her colleagues or is in deep trouble. She will find out shortly.
	I do not support the wording of the money resolution but I give the Under-Secretary faint praise for her action and I wish my hon. Friend well.

Frank Dobson: I apologise for my late arrival but I sat through the whole of Second Reading and every minute of our Committee proceedings.
	I welcome the money resolution and especially some training for judges. Judges who resort to their intellectual musings have led us to our current position, which was caused by a combination of the effects of an Act that was passed in 1977 and judges' extension of the concept of liability to people who are trying decently to provide play and other opportunities for children, young people and adults.
	It may be worth reminding judges that all the measure does is to take us back to pre-1977 days for some aspects of activity by restoring to statute the concept of the voluntary assumption of risk. It used to be part of common law but was removed in 1977. Since then, some judges have gone far too far and they need telling about that. It could form part of their training.
	Perhaps the judiciary in general would benefit from a little training so that, when it considers the rights of the individual, every now and then, it might consider the rights of society as a whole and reflect that a decision in favour of one or two individuals could be deleterious to many others, especially children who could be denied access to sport and other activities.
	I hope that that kind of thing will be included in the training for which this 1 million is to be made available. I also hope that one or two of the lessons learned from this could be offered more broadly across the judiciary in a combined effort by Parliament and the judiciary not to extend the law or to encourage people to resort to litigation every time they fall over and bruise their knee. We need to shift things back in the opposite direction. We all need to recognise that, as the judiciary has extended the concepts of liability and negligence in this sphere, we wish to restrict and restrain it in that regard. Such restriction and restraint will benefit most people, although a few who might otherwise successfully have sought compensation will not get any. The answer to them will be Tough, because everybody else will benefit.

John Burnett: I, too, rise to support the Bill and am delighted to be a sponsor. What sort of society would we have if we tried to make it risk-free? Young, spirited children must always have opportunities and I know from my own experience in the Royal Marines that we recruit entirely from young, spirited individuals who like sports, climbing, diving, parachuting and all the other things that I and the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) indulged in. He is unusual for a member of the Parachute Regiment, because he is tall. At the parachute school, we could always tell who was a Royal Marine and who was a parachutist; we were all 6ft tall, and they were all about 5ft 6in. Nevertheless, when we come together, we become a formidable operation.
	If society does not provide socially acceptable means of adventure and training, young individuals will soon find socially unacceptable ways of biding their time. The Bill provides for sound standards and proper training for volunteers. The Government recognise the growing number of grave obstacles to volunteering, including the ever-increasing incidence of litigation and threats of litigation and the huge insurance costs involved. Furthermore, insurance companies frequently refuse to cover certain activities. We must be seen to be behind the millions of volunteers who provide so much for their fellow citizens and for the youth of this country. I am therefore delighted to be a sponsor of the Bill and pleased to pay tribute again to the hon. Member for Canterbury for all that he has done. I wish the resolution well.
	Question put and agreed to.

Estimates and Appropriation Procedure

[Relevant document: The Government's Response to the Committee's Report, published in the First Special Report from the Procedure Committee, HC 576.]

Paul Boateng: I beg to move,
	That this House approves the First Report from the Procedure Committee of the current Session, on Estimates and Appropriation Procedure, House of Commons 393.

Madam Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss motion 8 on Questions on Voting Estimates, c.

Paul Boateng: This report follows the extremely constructive correspondence that I have had with a number of Committee Chairs about the changes to the Supply estimates and appropriation process and I am grateful for the care and attention that Members and Chairs on both sides of the House have paid to this matter. The aim is to improve the reporting of public expenditure information to Parliament and the Procedure Committee and other committees have responded quickly and positively to the Government's proposals.
	The changes include a move from one to two Appropriation Bills each Session, one in March and one in July. The reason for that is primarily to allow departmental resource accounts to be presented to the House earlier than is currently possible. At present, Departments that have winter or spring supplementary estimates do not get full legislative authority for that until the Appropriation Act is authorised in the July after the financial year-end. They cannot therefore present their accounts to the House until after Royal Assent, which is usually in mid-July. A March Appropriation Bill, which will replace the Consolidated Fund Bill currently presented at that time, will ensure that full legislative authority is provided in the same financial year.
	A further change would allow departmental Supply estimates to better reflect reductions in voted limits. Departments are currently allowed to seek increases in resources but not reductions. The current process can therefore lead to an unhelpful presentation of departmental spending plans and the change would allow estimates to better reflect reductions, for example, when responsibility and therefore resources for a particular function have been transferred to another Department as part of a machinery of government reorganisation, or when a Department was using savings from one request for resource within its estimates to finance additional spending in another.
	The second motion amends Standing Order No. 55. This proposed change, which has been recommended by the Procedure Committee, extends the minimum time available to Committees to scrutinise the estimates before formal authorisation from eight to 14 days. It also provides for estimates to better reflect the move to resource-based supply, by including limits on appropriations in aidthe amount of income that departments may retain. Other proposed changes set out in the Procedure Committee's report provide for the provision of additional information to the House. The main change is that Departments will be required to provide an estimates memorandum to their Select Committee, explaining how the changes sought in the estimates relate to spending controls and published targets.

Alan Williams: May I reiterate to my right hon. Friend on behalf of the Liaison Committeewe have had correspondencehow important it is that the memorandums are as clear and understandable as possible? The Treasury has been dragging its feet at official level. What we want to ensure is that we get maximum time, as he said, but also maximum clarity. To help to focus the attention of the Treasury, may I tell himwith my other hat on as Chairman of the Public Accounts Commissionthat I have invited the Comptroller and Auditor General at the end of the first 12 months to produce a review for the House of Commons of the clarity, adequacy and timeliness of the memorandums when the new system is introduced?

Paul Boateng: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the care and attention that he and his Committee have applied to this issue. Before the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee took his place in the Chamber, I thanked all Committee Chairmen for their contribution to the consideration of these matters, which has led to these motions being tabled. I take my right hon. Friend's point about the need for clarity in relation to the memorandums and will ensure that we do everything that we can to live up to the properly high standards that he, his Committee and his fellow Committee Chairmen demand and expect of us.

Edward Leigh: I am grateful to the Chief Secretary for what he has said. He will be aware of the correspondence that we have had, which is detailed in the report. As well as the Treasury being aware of what the Liaison Committee wants, I take it as read that he will issue full guidance to Departments on the contents of these new memorandums so that they are clear and useful to the House.

Paul Boateng: Certainly, we will take steps, whether through the issue of formal guidance or otherwise, to make sure that all Departments are aware of their responsibilities in relation to this matter and the changes proposed. I will write to the hon. Gentleman and my right hon. Friend to explain the means by which we have sought to ensure that their properly directed strictures have been met.
	An explanatory memorandum explaining the purpose of the motions in more detail has been made available in the Vote Office. With that, I commend the motions to the House.

Howard Flight: I wish to second support for the two motions and to congratulate the Procedure Committee on its work, which, as I understand it, implements the will of Parliament. Having read through the report, it struck me that any citizen doing so would not have a clue as to what it is about. If I may comment on such procedural matters, it would be helpful if there were at least some gloss to describe such effects in a way that citizens could understand.
	Before I conducted my researches, my gut reaction was to ask, Is there a rat to smell here? Is our stealthy Chancellor involved in some arrangement to slip something past us whose effects might be other than its apparent effects? Having checked with the National Audit Office and others, I established that my suspicion had been entirely erroneousor perhaps I have been too bogged down with the Finance Bill, and have missed something.
	This is, I think, an occasion on which the House of Commons has got what it wants. As the Chief Secretary explained, there will now be two Appropriation Acts each year rather than one. The reporting and availability of Government financial information will be improved and the sensible inclusion of negative estimates will make arrangements for the transfer of funds within and between Departments much more transparent. The measures constitute a sensible modernisation of appropriation procedures that have become somewhat outdated in the context of the requirements of ordinary life.
	There will be three key improvements. First, the changes will facilitate speedier completion of departmental accountshopefully by the summer recess. They will remove legal constraints that have hitherto prevented Departments from completing their accounts on time. We will take due note of whether they do have that effect. In the past, there have been unnecessary delays in the completion of audited Government accounts. I understand that until now parliamentary approval has been required for supplementary estimates and the fact that it has not been available in time has made Departments legally unable to produce their accounts on time. The second March Bill will make possible approval and thus completion of resource accounts in due time, with no legal restraints.
	Secondly, the new arrangements will improve the way in which estimates are used to facilitate changes in the machinery of government. For example, if the transfer of functions from one Department to anotheror, potentially, the consolidation of Departmentsoccurred after the production of the main estimates, there used to be a very complex and opaque arrangement which allowed accounts to be produced, but legally that was fairly difficult to accomplish. The changes will bring about transparency and remove the legal complexity involved in sorting out the figures.
	Thirdly, the arrangements will deal with instances in which savings in one departmental area are matched by additional spending in another. The new system of negative estimates will permit transfers of resources plus or minus within Departments. At present that can only be done by means of what is again a very complex and opaque procedure.
	The changes will increase transparency. The increase in the notice period for Select Committee approval from eight to 14 days is also welcome, but is essentially a formalisation of current practice.
	As the Chief Secretary has already commented, it is clearly necessary that there should be clear and explicit guidance for all Departments. We welcome his confirmation of that. I am pleased that, as I understand it, the Government have confirmed that they will accept two specific recommendations made by the Procedure Committee. First, changes in departmental expenditure limits will continue to be announced via written statements, as well as included in estimate memorandumsthe National Audit Office feels, rightly, that that is required and proper. Secondly, the Government agree that there should be a 14-day interval between presentation of the summer supplementary estimates and their approval, as well as a 14-day interval between the spring and winter estimates and their approval.
	We note that Departments will need to make better progress in the presentation of their accounts if the benefits of those technical changes are to be realised. We will look with confident expectation at that being achieved next year.

Robert Smith: I thank the Chief Secretary for setting a precedent by making a timely response to the Committee's recommendations and I hope that other Departments that respond to the Procedure Committee will follow it. That the response was in the required time was much appreciated.

Desmond Swayne: A rather better precedent is the fact that the Chief Secretary has agreed to all the recommendations of the report. Would not that be a precedent to follow?

Robert Smith: Given that the report followed a request from the Chief Secretary, the circle was being completedit would have been rather unusual if he had changed his mind. The report is a welcome step in the right direction. Much of it has already been dealt with by hon. Members, for example, the reasons for the process being brought forward and for the recommendations.
	In their response, the Government took the recommendations on board, although they made some minor caveats about which I want to question them. Recommendation 2 was about publishing annual lists to show the dates on which each resource account is laid before Parliament and publishedit is a chance for the Government to demonstrate what they are doing. Their response states:
	The Government accepts the recommendation to publish annual lists showing the dates on which individual resource accounts are laid before Parliament and published. The Government has no plans at present to amend the statutory deadlines but will keep them under review.
	It would be helpful if the Government showed a willingness to try to improve the speed at which they publish the annual lists, so that scrutiny is timely and effective. If the naming and shaming through publishing the lists does not achieve that, perhaps statutory deadlines may be required.
	The Committee recommended that the 14-day period should take account where possible of recesses and the times when the House is not sitting to do the leg work. The Government have said that they intend to take that into account, although they included the caveat:
	However, despite best efforts the timing of recess periods such as the half-term break, particularly if announced fairly late or subject to a change of date, may not always make it possible to ensure that a full two weeks of sitting days is included.
	I hope that that is a minor caveat. With modernisation, we were meant to have a regular timetable, so the Government should not be caught out. They have made the commitment that we should know all these things in advance. There was a time at Easter when they would have been caught out, and people would have had to understand, but I hope that people will not rely on that caveat and get too slack in meeting the deadlines.
	The Government say of the 14-day deadline:
	It is envisaged that this might not be met only in circumstances where departments require authority for spending on new services at a late stage in the process.
	I wonder whether the Government can give some idea how often they think that will happen and assure me that that is meant to be a minimalist caveat. If the process is to work, 14 days is still not a great length of time.
	I welcome the commitment to clear memorandums because that will offer a greater chance that scrutiny will be more effective and more focused. I welcome the Government's approach and hope that they can give some reassurances on the caveats that they have put in their response.

Desmond Swayne: May I apologise for the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, who is unavoidably elsewhere? The motions arise out of the first report of the Procedure Committee, although the proposals have also been considered by other Select Committees.
	I am in the fortunate position of rising when everything has already been said, even if not by everyone, so I can be brief. The proposals are directed at improving scrutiny of the Government's expenditure proposals that appear in the estimates. I do not think that we can be expected to nod through 12-figure sums without proper scrutiny, and these are useful changes.
	Having two Appropriation Acts per year instead of one, as previously, will enable the resource accountsthe successors of the appropriation accountsto be produced earlier. The winter and spring supplementary estimates will be laid at least a fortnight before their approval, which gives a much more realistic time scale to the opportunity for scrutiny, especially if the proofs are made available to the Select Committees in advance of that.
	Resource accounts and estimates do not naturally lend themselves to the scrutiny of ordinary Members of Parliament without some expertise, and in that regard, the new scrutiny unit will assist by explaining matters to Members, and perhaps even pointing them towards useful avenues of inquiry. Each Department will produce an estimates memorandum to its Select Committee, which will accompany the estimate. We hope that supplementary estimates will be in a standard format, analysing the changes proposed. The reasons will be set out in the accompanying memorandum.
	I understand that the contents of the memorandums will be a matter for negotiation between Departments and their Select Committees, and Committees will clearly differ over what they expect and require in their own estimate and memorandum. However, I hope that the Chief Secretary will be open to representations for the material that will form the core of those memorandums, and that guidance will be issued to the Departments, as he has already given us to believe. I am sure that the Liaison Committee will pursue that with him.
	Before we get too excited, I quote from the conclusion of the Procedure Committee's report, which says that the change is a useful but
	minor . . . improvement in the House's procedures.

Phil Woolas: This debate has been short, positive, useful and more lively than anticipated. I start by thanking the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), who has explained to the House that unfortunately, he cannot be here. I should like to put on record our thanks to him, on behalf of the Government and the whole House, and to the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne), who is a member of the Committee, for explaining that to us.
	I reiterate the thanks expressed by my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the four Committees involved in the debate for their swift and positive response to the Treasury's original proposals for change. We owe particular thanks to the Procedure Committee for its helpful report. We could call it sensible accounting, and on the anniversary of the tragic death of our former leader John Smith, sensible accounting is something that we should all support and bear in mind.

David Taylor: The Minister refers to sensible accounting, and I declare an interest as an accountant.
	In relation to the point made by the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) on Committees nodding through 12-figure sums without the background information needed to know whether that is justifiable, how does the Minister respond to the International Monetary Fund's observation that the private finance initiative commitments that our Government have racked up during the past seven years, which are 12-figure sums in aggregate, should appear on the national balance sheet, rather than being invisible as at present?

Phil Woolas: The House spent three and a half hours yesterday debating 5 million, and looks set to spend about 40 minutes today debating how we account for the expenditure of hundreds of billions of pounds. It would not be wise for me to go into that issue in detail, but my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary has noted the point that was made.
	For those Members who have never been fully confident about the differences between a Consolidated Fund Bill and an Appropriation Bill, or between Votes on Account and Excess Votes, the Committee's clear exposition of our Supply procedure is very useful. Reference has been made to the memorandum by the Clerk Assistant, which is printed on page 52 of the report. It is particularly helpful and I commend it to Members.
	I shall try to respond briefly to some of the points that were made. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight) welcomed the report and I thank him for that. He implied that the use of plain English would be helpful, but I am not sure that the accountancy profession would always support that idea. Like the legal profession, it tries to keep some semblance of its own language for its own benefit. As he acknowledged, a very helpful explanatory memorandum is available and can be referred to. I was rather worried when he said that his instinct told him that he smelled a rat, only to discover that he could not smell one. It is good advice for Governments always to work on the principle that if the Opposition Treasury spokesman cannot smell a rat, there probably is one and he simply cannot smell it. That said, I think we are all in agreement, and I am grateful for that.
	The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) asked three questions, the first of which concerned recommendation 2, speed of publishing and the statutory deadline. We do of course intend to meet the deadline, but in the spirit of sensible accounting my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary is keeping the matter under review. The hon. Gentleman also asked about the 14-day period, and I can confirm that the Government and the Committees intend that the period in question be 14 working days. As he pointed out, in the past two years the Government and the Leader of the House have helpfully published a calendar of parliamentary sitting times, but of course, there is the inevitable caveat of flexibility. The intention is that common sense be applied, but half-term might cause problems, as the hon. Gentleman suggested. [Interruption.] I am helpfully informed by my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary that the period is indeed 14 days.
	The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine also asked whether there would be exceptions. I am informed that there is the usual Treasury contingency, in that one has to plan for all eventualities. That is the sensible approach.

Oliver Heald: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I did not choose to wind up the debate for the Opposition, given its narrow nature. Will the guidance given to Departments be made available to Members, so that we can judge whether we think it right?

Phil Woolas: I am grateful for that helpful intervention from the shadow Leader of the House, and I appreciate what he says about not winding up the debate. On the guidanceabout which the hon. Member for New Forest, West also askedthe Chief Secretary is very sympathetic to the point that is being made. He intends to write to the Chairmen of the Select Committees to clarify the guidance in each departmental area. That will be done forthwith. I hope that that deals with the questions asked at this stage of the debate.

Edward Leigh: The Minister mentioned the excellent memorandum and referred to the table on page 51. I see from the section on the historical background on page 52 that
	the systematic use of legislative appropriate dates from the Glorious Revolution.
	If we are to have historical references, could they avoid value judgments?

Phil Woolas: Some in the House would argue that all historical references are value judgments. What is important is that supply measures are the property of the House and not the other place. I am sure that every hon. Member would agree with that and long may it be so.
	In conclusion, once again the Government have listened to the advice of Select Committees. We are grateful to them; that is what they are there for. Once again the Government have provided time on the Floor of the House to debate these important issues, and I hope that that will be noted. What we are proposing is a modest and sensible change to our supply procedure. Several Committees have endorsed both motions on the Order Paper and I commend them to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.

QUESTIONS ON VOTING OF ESTIMATES, C.

Ordered,
	That the following be substituted for Standing Order No. 55 (Questions on voting of estimates, c.):
	Questions on voting of estimates, c.
	'55.
	(1) On any day to which the provisions of paragraphs (2), (3) or (4) of this order apply the Speaker shall at the moment of interruption put the questions on
	(a) any outstanding vote relating to numbers for defence services;
	(b) any motion authorising amounts and limits on appropriations in aid, set out in outstanding estimates.
	(2) The provisions of paragraph (1) of this order shall apply on a day not later than 6th February, if any of the following total amounts have been put down for consideration:
	(a) votes on account for the coming financial year;
	(b) supplementary and new estimates for the current financial year which have been presented at least fourteen days previously.
	(3) The provisions of paragraph (1) of this order shall apply on a day not later than 18th March, if any of the following numbers or total amounts have been put down for consideration:
	(a) votes relating to numbers for defence services;
	(b) supplementary and new estimates for the current financial year which have been presented at least fourteen days previously;
	(c) excess votes, provided that the Committee of Public Accounts has reported that it sees no objection to the amounts and modifications to limits on appropriations in aid necessary being authorised by excess vote.
	(4) The provisions of paragraph (1) of this order shall apply on a day not later than 5th August in respect of any motion authorising amounts, and limits on appropriations in aid, set out in outstanding estimates.
	(5) At least two days' notice shall be given of the motions which are to be put down for consideration under paragraphs (2), (3) or (4) of this order.
	(6)
	The provisions of this order shall not apply to any vote of credit or votes for supplementary or additional estimates for war expenditure.'.[Mr. Heppell.]

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

Ordered,
	That Mr George Osborne be discharged from the Committee on Public Accounts and that Mr David Curry be added.[Mr. Heppell.]

Exmoor National Park

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Mr. Heppell.]

Ian Liddell-Grainger: I am delighted to see the Minister in his place and to know that a west country Member will reply to this debate on Exmoor. I know that he has bicycled over most of the west country, so I am delighted to see him here.
	I regard myself as an extremely fortunate man. Every morning in my Bridgwater constituency, I wake up, pull open the curtains and gaze towards one of the most beautiful places on earthExmoor. I am delighted to have a chance to talk about it this evening. Exmoor national park is 50 years old this year, during which time it has positively bloomed.
	Members perhaps spend too much time looking back, but if I may indulge the House I propose to provide a potted history of the national park. Seventy years ago, one could hardly wander across Exmoor. Most of the land was privately owned and most of the owners preferred to keep it that way. By 1930even thenthere was growing political pressure to open up the countryside. New organisations well known to us, such as the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the Youth Hostels Association, were flexing their then not inconsiderable muscles. America had already created its own famous national parks. Yogi Bear was already loose in Yellowstone park, so surely it was time for Britain to do the same.
	In 1931, a Government inquiry recommended a brave new national authority. Eurekawhat a splendid idea, and what a crying shame that it took another 23 years to create Exmoor national park. The snail's pace of British democracy is a maddening mystery to us all but, half a century later, there is a great deal to celebrate.
	So, I give three big cheers for the rangers and the expert staff who make Exmoor's conservation their life, and their way of life. I give two medium cheers for the 26 members of the national park authoritysomeone has to do the job, and it does not make them rich. I also give a muted cheer for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, although I suspect that the Minister was hoping for more. However, there are no cheers at all for some of the crass decision making that mars the good name of what I believe to be the best place on the planet.
	I have no desire to scare the House, but there is said to be a huge, horrible and hairy creature stalking Exmoor. The beast was always thought to be a myth, dreamed up to tell to tourists, but I am not quite so sure now. I think I have seen the beast in action, and I am afraid it is the beast of bureaucracya ghastly manifestation of officialdom gone mad.
	If the House will indulge me, I should like to tell a real story of the moor and its wildlife, and of what happens when the beast appears. In this, I am indebted to a journalist called Annalisa Yard. She dug out the story, and her editor at the West Somerset Free Press had what some would say was the courage to print it. It is a story about peaceful creatures and the wild beast of bureaucracy.
	On Exmoor, we have all sorts of creaturesbadgers, foxes, the famed red deer, Jacob sheep, alpacas, and Simmental cattle; one can even find the odd llama. There is a family of meerkats, a couple of kookaburras and an equally exotic mara. Not all can claim to be indigenous to Exmoorit is not their natural breeding ground or habitat, but what the heck? They are not doing anyone any harm, and they should not attract the attention of the Exmoor bureaucrats, but some of them have.
	This is the sort of silly issue that gives the Exmoor national park authority a bad name. The real beast of Exmoor is not a figment of the imagination, or an overweight wild catit is the legally empowered bunch of officials with the right to make rules. Those rules would have had the Porlock kookaburras packed off in crates and shipped off the moor for ever, all because they have been designated non-native.
	I live on the fringe of the moor, but I was born in Scotland; presumably, that makes me non-native too. I shall not even ask where the Minister was born. The sort of language being used is normally associated with radical extremists. One does not expect to hear it from the lips of people whose sole reason for existence, according to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, is to
	conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of their area.
	Fortunately, the bureaucratic beast of Exmoor did not get away with it this time, and thanks has to go again to the West Somerset Free Press. Officialdom and its beastly rulebook said, Kick the kookaburras out! Exmoor authority members, however, voted for common sense. I wish them more power to their elbowbut how much more power?
	One of the features of every national park, Exmoor included, is that it runs its own planning system. That makes sense in theory. If one wants to preserve the culture of an area, one has to set rigid regulations and leave it to officials, by delegated power, to give the final yea or nay.
	However, officials are only as good as the rules they enforce, and that leads to a number of questions. First, what exactly is the kookaburra rule? Secondly, who approved it? Thirdly, how do we stop this nonsense in future?
	I shall try to give some answers. Let me quote the rule itself:
	The Kookaburra is not indigenous to Exmoor and does not therefore contribute to the understanding or enjoyment of Exmoor.
	That is a matter of loose interpretation, not of hard fact. The rule forms part of the national parks development plan, so at some stage it must have come before members of the authority. Why did they not notice it?
	How do we stop such nonsense in future? This is where the debate starts. The national park has many of the powers of a local authority and a fair chunk of public money. Exmoor national park does a sterling job and valuable work, very economically. Its annual budget is some 3.5 million, and tourism is booming. It deserves a pat on the back. Its members are dedicated and its aims are high. All that is good.
	The national park's budgets have been cut, however, as the Minister knows. However, one cannot take the national park authority before the ombudsman in a claim of maladministrationI do not propose that in this caseand, like local councillors, its members are not legally liable for things that go wrong. National park authorities answer first to DEFRA and second to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, although, given his identity, it may be hard for them to understand the question. After 50 years, perhaps it is time for a little straightforward accountability.
	Exmoor national park authority has 19 members who are drawn from parish, district and county councilslocal people who know Exmoor like the back of their hands, and I can vouch for that. The Secretary of State, however, directly appoints seven others, and they are not locals at all. There is a bloke from Warwickshire and a lady from Wiltshire. I do not expect that they pop into Exmoor national park very often. The Government want to increase the number of such appointees from seven to 10, but surely it is time to insist that Government appointees are local people too.
	Exmoor national park is a wonderful institution that has done a brilliant job over 50 glorious years. It has not done many things wrong, but in the light of some of the beastly bureaucracy it is a wonder that it has managed that.

Ben Bradshaw: I congratulate the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger) on securing the debate and I apologise for the absence of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Rural Affairs and Local Environmental Quality, who had an accident earlier this afternoon and had to be taken to hospital. I have taken his place at short notice.
	The hon. Gentleman did not mentionso I mustthat the creation of the national parks was one of the triumphs of the 1945 Labour Government. They were a victory for Fabian socialism and the belief that our finest landscapes are a national treasure for all to enjoy. Amid the many changes of the last decades, Exmoor and its fellow national parks have provided constant oases of calm and refreshment. It pleases me, as a Devon Member, to respond to the debate on a national park shared with the hon. Gentleman and his neighbours in Somerset.
	What would have become of Exmoor if it had not been a national park? That is an interesting question, but it is impossible to know. The threats that seemed very real at the time of designationfrom intensive agriculture or from large-scale conifer plantationshave happily been avoided, and Exmoor has been conserved for further generations. That conservation work includes caring for the park's 31 native mammal species, 243 bird species, 1,000 flower and grass species and 1,751 insect species. As recently as January, 33 hectares of the famous Tarr Steps woods have been declared a national nature reserve. The park authority has drafted a biodiversity action plan, covering seven habitats and seven species. In short, there have been real and tangible conservation achievements.
	Of course, conservation is only part of what the parks are about. They have a second purpose:
	promoting opportunities for the understanding and enjoyment of the special qualities of those areas by the public.
	In pursuing those purposes, they also have a duty to
	foster the economic and social well-being of local communities within the National Park . . . and . . . co-operate with local authorities and public bodies whose functions include the promotion of economic or social development within the area of the National Park.
	Those words show clearly that the national park authorities are neither tourism authorities nor tourism promoters as the tourism industry might understand those roles, but that they need to be aware of the value of appropriate tourism in pursuit both of their recreational purposes and their socio-economic duty. Our national parks are major features of the tourism landscape; for example, when last measured, in 1994, Exmoor was attracting 1.4 million visitor days a year. A new survey is due to begin shortly and I am sure that it will show a significant increase.
	The Visit Exmoor initiative, which is led by the park authority, with West Somerset district council and the tourism industry, will promote and market Exmoor, encourage sustainable tourism and improve the quality of the visitor experience. To take a specific example: the authority's water-powered sawmill at Simonsbath will promote the use of renewable energy as well as promoting tourism and will form part of the authority's sustainable countryside management initiative. It will truly be a multifaceted project.
	The hon. Member for Bridgwater touched on planning, which is a key responsibility of the park authority. The Government are keen to see that the performance of national park authorities is consistent with that of other planning authorities. Key relevant statistics include the fact that, in 200405, all the national park authorities, including the Broads authority, are receiving planning delivery grant from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in recognition of their planning performance. Exmoor is receiving 76,353. Between 1997 and 2001, Exmoor received 1,645 planning applications of which 87 per cent. were granted. An analysis of the applications received from businesses on Exmoor in 2003 shows that of the 82 applications made, eight were withdrawn and only five rejectedan approval rate of 93 per cent.
	The hon. Gentleman posed three questions, which he then proceeded to answer himself. Let me offer my answers to his points. First, he asked exactly what exactly was the kookaburra rule. There is no kookaburra rule, nor is there a meerkat rule or a llama rule; rather there are site-specific conditions, as are commonly attached to planning permissions, that address the specific circumstances of a particular site or application.
	In 1983, in the case to which I think the hon. Gentleman was referring, a condition was imposed that no exotic animals could be kept. That condition, we believe, grew out of local concerns about allowing a public attraction to open at the site. Certainly, it is consistent with what we understand to have been the view of the planning authority at the time; namely, that the only way such a development could be justified at the location was if it were an educational facility which would relate directly to the national park purpose at that time, of promoting the . . . enjoyment of the park by the public.
	The hon. Gentleman's second question was, Who approved the kookaburra rule? As I have explained, there is no kookaburra rule, so no one approved it. However, the exotic animals condition was imposed by the then planning authority in the planning permission given to the centre in 1983. The line that the planning authority took on exotic animals has since been confirmed on three occasions. The first was in 1994 when, in addressing a request to relax some conditions at the site, the then planning authority confirmed that exotic animals should not be kept there and set a 10-year deadline for their removal.
	The second occasion was in 1999 when a planning inspector came to the same conclusion. Most recently, the Exmoor national park authority has again come to the view that exotic animals should not be kept at the site, but they have extended the deadline for their removal to cover the lifetimes of the existing stock.
	Finally, the hon. Gentleman asked how we could stop all this nonsense in future. It is not for me to second-guess the merits of individual decisions taken by local planning authorities, especially when they date back 20 years, and I am also mindful of the need to avoid any comment that might prejudice a future decision of the park authority or a legal challenge. However, in respect of the whole process, it seems to me important that we have a planning system which, within an appropriate national framework, balances the interests of applicants and objectors and allows for local concerns to be reflected in local decisions. I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees with that principle.
	The hon. Gentleman touched on how an exotic species is defined, and posed the tantalising question, on which I do not offer a view, of whether a Scotsman on Exmoor might be thought exotic. As for animals and birds, it is self-evidently for the Exmoor national park authority, as the guardian of that planning condition, to specify its definition of exotic that is uses for that purpose. In practice, I understand that the species reported to the planning committee were a llama, two kookaburras, a group of mara, and a group of meerkats with their offspring, and that there have been other species in the past. For example, in the report of 1999, the planning inspector also recorded two pairs of wallabies and a pair of rhea.
	One of the hon. Gentleman's conclusions seems to be that the Exmoor national park authority needs more local members. Perhaps it would be helpful if I sketched out briefly how national park authorities are appointed. Their members are drawn from three separate sources to give an appropriate mix of interest and expertise. The largest group consists of the councillors appointed by county, district or unitary authorities in the national park. The smallest group consists of the councillors, or chairmen of parish meetings, chosen by those parish councils with land in the park.
	The third group consists of those members chosen by the Secretary of State. They are selected in full conformity with the Nolan principles, and in making their choices, Ministers try to augment or complement the range of knowledge, skills and expertise that is provided by councillor members. In many cases, the members chosen by the Secretary of State will have a local connectionindeed, that is a desirable traitbut they are primarily chosen to broaden the mix, not simply to replicate the local knowledge that is already strongly represented. In practice, five of the seven serving members on the Exmoor national park authority who were selected by the Secretary of State are based in either Somerset or Devon.
	It is indeed true that the 2002 review of the English national park authorities recommended a rebalancing of the authorities so that Exmoor would in future have 10 seats for county or district councils, rather than 14 at present; five seats for parish councils, the same as at present; and 10 seats for the Secretary of State's choices, as opposed to seven at present, making a total of 25, as opposed to 26 at present. However, that is a proposal for the future and would require primary legislation. The only change that we would like in the short to medium term is a reduction in the overall membership proportionately to 22, and we shall consult on that more modest proposal in the coming months.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes past Six o'clock.

Deferred Division
	  
	Visitor Facilities

Adjourned debate on Question [22 April].
	Motion made, and Question proposed, that this House approves the First Joint Report of the Accommodation and Works Committee and the Administration Committee on Visitor Facilities: Access to Parliament (House of Commons Paper No. 324) and endorses the Committees' proposals for a new reception and security building at the north end of Cromwell Green.(Mr. Phil Woolas.)
	The House divided: Ayes 333, Noes 46.

Question accordingly agreed to.